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CINDERELLA 


AND OTHER STORIES 


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CINDERELLA 


And Other Stories 

By 

Richard Harding Davis 



New York 

Charles Scribner’s Sons 
1899 





a . 

4 ^- 


Copyrighty i8g8y i8gg 

By Charles Scribner’s Sons 


TWO COPIES RECEIVED. 



Sanibcrsitg ^ress 

Joh^I'>ViLson and Son, Cambridge, U.S. A. 


Contents 

Page 


Cinderella i 

Miss Delamar’s Understudy .... 41 

The Editor’s Story 86 

An Assisted Emigrant 120 

The Reporter who Made Himself 

King 137 


The stories in this volume have appeared in Scrib- 
ner’s Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, Weekly, and Young 
People 5 and “The Reporter who Made Himself King,” 
also in a volume, the rest of which, however, addressed 
itself to younger readers. 



Cinderella 



HE servants of the Hotel Salisbury, 


which is so called because it is 


situated on Broadway and conducted on 
the American plan by a man named 
Riggs, had agreed upon a date for their 
annual ball and volunteer concert, and had 
announced that it would eclipse every 
other annual ball in the history of the 
hotel. As the Hotel Salisbury had been 
only two years in existence, this was not 
an idle boast, and it had the effect of in- 
ducing many people to buy the tickets, 
which sold at a dollar apiece, and were 
good for “ one gent and a lady,” and 
entitled the bearer to a hat-check without 
extra charge. 

In the flutter of preparation all ranks 
were temporarily levelled, and social bar- 


I 


Cinderella 


riers taken down with the mutual consent 
of those separated by them ; the night- 
clerk so far unbent as to personally re- 
quest the colored hall-boy Number Eight 
to play a banjo solo at the concert, which 
was to fill in the pauses between the 
dances, and the chambermaids . timidly 
consulted with the lady telegraph operator 
and the lady in charge of the telephone, 
as to whether or not they intended to 
wear hats. 

And so every employee on every floor 
of the hotel was working individually for 
the success of the ball, from the engineers 
in charge of the electric light plant in the 
cellar, to the night-watchman on the 
ninth story, and the elevator-boys who 
belonged to no floor in particular. 

Miss Celestine Terrell, who was Mrs. 
Grahame West in private life, and young i 
Grahame West, who played the part op- i 
posite to hers in the Gilbert and Sullivan 
Opera that was then in the third month 
of its New York run, were among the 
honored patrons of the Hotel Salisbury. 


Cinderella 


Miss Terrell, in her utter inability to 
adjust the American coinage to English 
standards, and also in the kindness of her 
heart, had given too generous tips to all 
of the hotel waiters, and some of this 
money had passed into the gallery win- 
dow of the Broadway Theatre, where the 
hotel waiters had heard her sing and seen 
her dance, and had failed to recognize her 
young husband in the Lord Chancellor’s 
wig and black silk court dress. So they 
knew that she was a celebrated personage, 
and they urged the maitre d* hotel to invite 
her to the ball, and then persuade her to 
take a part in their volunteer concert. 

Paul the head-waiter, or “ Pierrot,” 
as Grahame West called him, because it 
was shorter, as he explained, hovered over 
the two young English people one night 
at supper, and served them lavishly with 
his own hands. 

“Miss Terrell,” said Paul, nervously, — 
“ I beg pardon. Madam, Mrs. Grahame 
West, I should say, — I would like to 
make an invitation to you.” 

3 


Cinderella 


Celestine looked at her husband inquir- 
ingly, and bowed her head for Paul to 
continue. 

“ The employees of the Salisbury give 
the annual ball and concert on the six- 
teenth of December, and the committee 
have inquired and requested of me, on 
account of your kindness, to ask you 
would you be so polite as to sing a little 
song for us at the night of our ball ? ” 

The head waiter drew a long breath i 
and straightened himself with a sense of | 
relief at having done his part, whether the | 
Grahame Wests did theirs or not. 

As a rule. Miss Terrell did not sing in 
private, and had only broken this rule 
twice, when the inducements which led 
her to do so were forty pounds for each 
performance, and the fact that her beloved 
Princess of Wales was to be present. So 
she hesitated for an instant. 

‘‘ Why, you are very good,” she said 
doubtfully. ‘‘ Will there be any other 
people there, — any one not an employee, ; 
I mean ? ” | 


4 


Cinderella 

Paul misunderstood her and became a 
servant again. 

“ No, I am afraid there will be only 
the employees, Madam,” he said. 

“ Oh, then, I should be very glad to 
come,” murmured Celestine, sweetly. 
“ But I never sing out of the theatre, so 
you must n’t mind if it is not good.” 

The head-waiter played a violent tattoo 
on the back of the chair in his delight, 
and balanced and bowed. 

Ah, we are very proud and pleased 
that we can induce Madam to make so 
great exceptions,” he declared. “ The 
committee will be most happy. We will 
send a carriage for Madam, and a bouquet 
for Madam also,” he added grandly, as 
one who was not to be denied the etiquette 
to which he plainly showed he was used. 

“Will we come ? ” cried Van Bibber, 
incredulously, as he and Travers sat 
watching Grahame make up in his dress- 
ing-room. “ I should say we would come. 
And you must all take supper with us 
5 


Cinderella 


first, and we will get Letty Chamberlain 
from the Gaiety Company and Lester to 
come too, and make them each do a turn.” 

“ And we can dance on the floor our- 
selves, can’t we ? ” asked Grahame West, 
“ as they do at home Christmas-eve in the 
servants’ hall, when her ladyship dances in 
the same set with the butler and the men 
waltz with the cook.” 

“Well, over here,” said Van Bibber, 
“ you ’ll have to be careful that you ’re 
properly presented to the cook first, or 
she ’ll appeal to the floor committee and 
have you thrown out.” 

“ The interesting thing about that ball,” 
said Travers, as he and Van Bibber 
walked home that night, “ is the fact that 
those hotel people are getting a galaxy of 
stars to amuse them for nothing who 
would n’t exhibit themselves at a Fifth 
Avenue dance for all the money in Wall 
Street. And the joke of it is going to be 
that the servants will vastly prefer the 
banjo solo by hall-boy Number Eight.” 

Lyric Hall lies just this side of the 
6 


Cinderella 


Forty-second Street station along the line 
of the Sixth Avenue Elevated road, and 
you can look into its windows from the 
passing train. It was after one o’clock 
when the invited guests and their friends 
pushed open the storm-doors and were 
recognized by the anxious committee-men 
who were taking tickets at the top of the 
stairs. The committee-men fled in differ- 
ent directions, shouting for Mr. Paul, and 
Mr. Paul arrived beaming with delight and 
moisture, and presented a huge bouquet to 
Mrs. West, and welcomed her friends 
with hospitable warmth. 

Mrs. West and Miss Chamberlain took 
off their hats and the men gave up their 
coats, not without misgivings, to a sleepy 
young man who said pleasantly, as he 
dragged them into the coat-room window, 
‘^that they would be playing in great luck 
if they ever saw them again.” 

“ I don’t need to give you no checks,” 
he explained ; “just ask for the coats with 
real fur on ’em. Nobody else has any.” 

There was a balcony overhanging the 

7 


Cinderella 


floor, and the invited guests were escorted 
to it, and given seats where they could 
look down upon the dancers below, and 
the committee-men, in dangling badges 
with edges of silver fringe, stood behind 
their chairs and poured out champagne 
for them lavishly, and tore up the wine- 
check which the bar-keeper brought with | 
it, with princely hospitality. 

The entrance of the invited guests 
created but small interest, and neither the 
beauty of the two English girls nor 
Lester’s well-known features, which smiled 
from shop-windows and on every ash- 
barrel in the New York streets, aroused 
any particular comment. The employees 
were much more occupied with the 
Lancers then in progress, and with the 
joyful actions of one of their number 
who was playing blind-man’s-buff with 
himself, and swaying from set to set in 
search of his partner, who had given him 
up as hopeless and retired to the supper- 
room for crackers and beer. 

Some of the ladies wore bonnets, and 
8 


Cinderella 


others wore flowers in their hair, and a 
half-dozen were in gowns which were 
obviously intended for dancing and nothing 
else. But none of them were in decollete 
gowns. A few wore gloves. They had 
copied the fashions of their richer sisters 
with the intuitive taste of the American 
girl of their class, and they waltzed quite 
as well as the ladies whose dresses they 
copied, and many of them were exceed- 
ingly pretty. The costumes of the gentle- 
men varied from the clothes they wore 
nightly when waiting on the table, to 
cutaway coats with white satin ties, and 
the regular blue and brass-buttoned uni- 
form of the hotel. 

“I am going to dance,’’ said Van 
Bibber, “ if Mr. Pierrot will present me 
to one of the ladies.” 

Paul introduced him to a lady in a 
white cheese-cloth dress and black walk- 
ing-shoes, with whom no one else would 
dance, and the musicians struck up “ The 
Band Played On,” and they launched out 
upon a slippery floor. 

9 


Cinderella 


Van Bibber was conscious that his 
friends were applauding him in dumb 
show from the balcony, and when his i 
partner asked who they were, he repudi- 
ated them altogether, and said he could 
not imagine, but that he guessed from their 
bad manners they were professional enter- 
tainers hired for the evening. 

The music stopped abruptly, and as he 
saw Mrs. West leaving the balcony, he 
knew that his turn had come, and as she ! 
passed him he applauded her vociferously, 
and as no one else applauded even slightly, 
she grew very red. 

Her friends knew that they formed the 
audience which she dreaded, and she knew 
that they were rejoicing in her embarrass- 
ment, which the head of the downstairs 
department, as Mr. Paul described him, 
increased to an hysterical point by intro- 
ducing her as ‘‘Miss Ellen Terry, the 
great English actress, who would now 
oblige with a song.” 

The man had seen the name of the 
wonderful English actress on the bill- 

lO 


Cinderella 


boards in front of Abbey’s Theatre, and 
he had been told that Miss Terrell was 
English, and confused the two names. As 
he passed Van Bibber he drew his waist- 
coat into shape with a proud shrug of his 
shoulders, and said anxiously, ‘T gave 
your friend a good introduction, anyway, 
did n’t I ? ” 

“You did, indeed,” Van Bibber an- 
swered. “You couldn’t have surprised 
her more ; and it made a great hit with 
me, too.” 

No one in the room listened to the 
singing. The gentlemen had crossed their 
legs comfortably and were expressing their 
regret to their partners that so much time 
was wasted in sandwiching songs between 
the waltzes, and the ladies were engaged in 
criticising Celestine’s hair, which she wore 
in a bun. They thought that it might be 
English, but it certainly was not their idea 
of good style. 

Celestine was conscious of the fact that 
her husband and Lester were hanging far 
over the balcony, holding their hands to 

II 


Cinderella 


their eyes as though they were opera- 
glasses, and exclaiming with admiration 
and delight ; and when she had finished 
the first verse, they pretended to think that 
the song was over, and shouted, Bravo, 
encore,” and applauded frantically, and 
then apparently overcome with confusion 
at their mistake, sank back entirely from 
sight. 

‘‘I think Miss Terrell’s an elegant 
singer,” Van Bibber’s partner said to him. 
“ I seen her at the hotel frequently. She 
has such a pleasant way with her, quite 
lady-like. She ’s the only actress I ever 
saw that has retained her timidity. She 
acts as though she were shy, don’t she ? ” 

Van Bibber, who had spent a month on 
the Thames the summer before, with the 
Grahame Wests, surveyed Celestine with 
sudden interest, as though he had never 
seen her before until that moment, and 
agreed that she did look shy, one might 
almost say frightened to death. Mrs. 
West rushed through the second verse of 
the song, bowed breathlessly, and ran down 
12 


Cinderella 


the steps of the stage and back to the 
refuge of the balcony, while the audience 
applauded with perfunctory politeness and 
called clamorously to the musicians to 
“ Let her go ! ” 

“ And that is the song,” commented 
Van Bibber, “that gets six encores and 
three calls every night on Broadway ! ” 

Grahame West affected to be greatly 
chagrined at his wife’s failure to charm the 
chambermaids and porters with her little 
love-song, and when his turn came, he left 
them with alacrity, assuring them that they 
would now see the difference, as he would 
sing a song better suited to their level. 

But the song that had charmed London 
and captured the unprotected coast town 
of New York, fell on heedless ears; and 
except the evil ones in the gallery, no one 
laughed and no one listened, and Lester 
declared with tears in his eyes that he 
would not go through such an ordeal for 
the receipts of an Actors’ Fund Benefit. 

Van Bibber’s partner caught him laugh- 
ing at Grahame West’s vain efforts to 

13 


Cinderella 


amuse, and said, tolerantly, that Mr. West 
was certainly comical, but that she had a 
lady friend with her who could recite 
pieces which were that comic that you M 
die of laughing. She presented her friend 
to Van Bibber, and he said he hoped that 
they were going to hear her recite, as 
laughing must be a pleasant death. But 
the young lady explained that she had had 
the misfortune to lose her only brother that 
summer, and that she had given up every- 
thing but dancing in consequence. She 
said she did not think it looked right to 
see a girl in mourning recite comic 
monologues. 

Van Bibber struggled to be sympathetic,^ 
and asked what her brother had died of ? 
She told him that ‘‘ he died of a Thursday,” 
and the conversation came to an embar- 
rassing pause. 

Van Bibber’s partner had another friend 
in a gray corduroy waistcoat and tan shoes, 
who was of Hebraic appearance. He also 
wore several very fine rings, and officiated 
with what was certainly religious tolerance 

14 


Cinderella 


at the M. E. Bethel Church. She said he 
was an elegant or — gan — ist, putting the 
emphasis on the second syllable, which 
made Van Bibber think that she was speak- 
ing of some religious body to which he 
belonged. But the organist made his pro- 
fession clear by explaining that the com- 
mittee had just invited him to oblige the 
company with a solo on the piano, but 
that he had been hitting the champagne 
so hard that he doubted if he could tell 
the keys from the pedals, and he added 
that if they M excuse him he would go to 
sleep, which he immediately did with his 
head on the shoulder of the lady recitation- 
ist, who tactfully tried not to notice that 
he was there. 

They were all waltzing again, and as 
Van Bibber guided his partner for a second 
time around the room, he noticed a par- 
ticularly handsome girl in a walking-dress, 
who was doing some sort of a fancy step 
with a solemn, grave-faced young man in 
the hotel livery. They seemed by their 
manner to know each other very well, and 

15 


Cinderella 


they had apparently practised the step that 
they were doing often before. 

The girl was much taller than the man, 
and was superior to him in every way. 
Her movements were freer and less con- 
scious, and she carried her head and 
shoulders as though she had never bent 
them above a broom. Her complexion 
was soft and her hair of the finest, deepest 
auburn. Among all the girls upon the 
floor she was the most remarkable, even 
if her dancing had not immediately dis- 
tinguished her. 

The step which she and her partner 
were exhibiting was one that probably had 
been taught her by a professor of dancing 
at some East Side academy, at the rate of 
fifty cents per hour, and which she no 
doubt believed was the latest step danced 
in the gilded halls of the Few Hundred. 
In this waltz the two dancers held each 
other’s hands, and the man swung his 
partner behind him, and then would turn 
and take up the step with her where they 
had dropped itj or they swung around 

i6 


Cinderella 


and around each other several times, as 
people do in fancy skating, and sometimes 
he spun her so quickly one vi^ay that the 
skirt of her walking-dress was wound as 
tightly around her legs and ankles as a 
cord around a top, and then, as he swung 
her in the opposite direction, it unwound 
again, and wrapped about her from the 
other side. They varied this when it 
pleased them with balancings and steps and 
posturings that were not sufficiently ex- 
travagant to bring any comment from the 
other dancers, but which were so full of 
grace and feeling for time and rhythm, 
that Van Bibber continually reversed his 
partner so that he might not for an instant 
lose sight of the girl with auburn hair. 

“ She is a very remarkable dancer,” he 
said at last, apologetically. “ Do you 
know who she is ? ” 

His partner had observed his interest 
with increasing disapproval, and she smiled 
triumphantly now at the chance that his 
question gave her. 

“ She is the seventh-floor chamber- 
2 17 


Cinderella 


maid,” she said. I,” she added in a ‘ 
tone which marked the social superiority, 
am a checker and marker.” 

‘‘Really?” said Van Bibber, with a 
polite accent of proper awe. 

He decided that he must see more of 
this Cinderella of the Hotel Salisbury ; ; 
and dropping his partner by the side of 
the lady recitationist, he bowed his thanks 
and hurried to the gallery for a better view. . 

When he reached it he found his pro- 
fessional friends hanging over the railing, 
watching every movement which the girl 
made with an intense and unaffected i 
interest. ‘ 

“ Have you noticed that girl with red 
hair ? ” he asked, as he pulled up a chair 
beside them. 

But they only nodded and kept their 
eyes fastened on the opening in the crowd . 
through which she had disappeared. 

“There she is,” Grahame West cried 
excitedly, as the girl swept out from the 
mass of dancers into the clear space. 

“ Now you can see what I mean,' 

i8 


Cinderella 


Celestine,” he said. “ Where he turns 
her like that. We could do it in the 
shadow-dance in the second act. It ’s 
very pretty. She lets go his right hand 
and then he swings her and balances back- 
ward until she takes up the step again, 
when she faces him. It is very simple 
and very effective. Is n’t it, George ? ” 

Lester nodded and said, “Yes, very. 
She’s a born dancer. You can teach 
people steps, but you can’t teach them to 
be graceful.” 

“ She reminds me of Sylvia Grey,” said 
Miss Chamberlain. “ There ’s nothing 
violent about it, or faked, is there ? It ’s 
just the poetry of motion, without any 
tricks.” 

Lester, who was a trick dancer himself, 
and Grahame West, who was one of the 
best eccentric dancers in England, assented 
to this cheerfully. 

Van Bibber listened to the comments 
of the authorities and smiled grimly. The 
contrast which their lives presented to that 
of the young girl whom they praised so 

19 


Cinderella 


highly, struck him as being most interest- 
ing. Here were two men who had made 
comic dances a profound and serious 
study, and the two women who had lifted 
dancing to the plane of a fine art, all 
envying and complimenting a girl who 
was doing for her own pleasure that which 
was to them hard work and a livelihood. 
But while they were going back the next 
day to be applauded and petted and praised 
by a friendly public, she was to fly like 
Cinderella, to take up her sweeping and 
dusting and the making of beds, and the 
answering of peremptory summonses from 
electric buttons. 

A good teacher could make her worth 
one hundred dollars a week in six lessons,” 
said Lester, dispassionately. “ I ’d be 
willing to make her an offer myself, if I 
had n’t* too many dancers in the piece 
already.” 

“ A hundred dollars — that ’s twenty 
pounds,” said Mrs. Grahame West. 
‘‘ You do pay such prices over here ! But 
I quite agree that she is very graceful ; 

20 


Cinderella 

and she is so unconscious, too, is n’t 
she ? ” 

The interest in Cinderella ceased when 
the waltzing stopped, and the attention of 
those in the gallery was riveted with equal 
intensity upon Miss Chamberlain and 
Travers, who had faced each other in a 
quadrille. Miss Chamberlain having ac- 
cepted the assistant barkeeper for a part- 
ner, while Travers contented himself with 
a tall, elderly female, who in business 
hours had entire charge of the linen 
department. The barkeeper was a mel- 
ancholy man with a dyed mustache, and 
when he asked the English dancer from 
what hotel she came, and she, thinking he 
meant at what hotel was she stopping, told 
him, he said that that was a slow place, 
and that if she would let him know when 
she had her night off, he would be pleased 
to meet her at the Twenty-third station 
of the Sixth Avenue road on the uptown 
side, and would take her to the theatre, 
for which, he explained, he was able to 
obtain tickets for nothing, as so many 


21 


Cinderella 



drinks. | 

Miss Chamberlain told him in return, ; 
that she just doted on the theatre, and ■ 
promised to meet him the very next even- ; 
ing. She sent him anonymously instead j 
two seats in the front row for her per- ; 
formance. She had much delight the \ 
next night in watching his countenance ; 
when, after arriving somewhat late and ! 
cross, he recognized the radiant beauty on i 
the stage as the young person with whom : 
he had condescended to dance. ! 

When the quadrille was over she intro- , 
duced him to Travers, and Travers told ' 
him he mixed drinks at the Knickerbocker . 
Club, and that his greatest work was a 
Van Bibber cocktail. And when the bar- 
keeper asked for the recipe and promised 
to “ push it along,” Travers told him he 
never made it twice the same, as it de- 
pended entirely on his mood. 

Mrs. Grahame West and Lester were 
scandalized at the conduct of these two 
young people and ordered the party home, 
22 


Cinderella 


and as the dance was growing somewhat 
noisy and the gentlemen were smoking as 
they danced, the invited guests made their 
bows to Mr. Paul and went out into cold, 
silent streets, followed by the thanks and 
compliments of seven bareheaded and 
swaying committee-men. 

The next week Lester went on the 
road with his comic-opera company ; the 
Grahame Wests sailed to England, Letty 
Chamberlain and the other “ Gee Gees,’^ 
as Travers called the Gayety Girls, de- 
parted for Chicago, and Travers and Van 
Bibber were left alone. 

The annual ball was a month in the 
past, when Van Bibber found Travers at 
breakfast at their club, and dropped into a 
chair beside him with a sigh of weariness 
and indecision. 

What ’s the trouble ? Have some 
breakfast ? ” said Travers, cheerfully. 

“Thank you, no,” said Van Bibber, 
gazing at his friend doubtfully ; “ I want 
to ask you what you think of this. Do 

23 


Cinderella 

you remember that girl at that servants’ 
ball ? ” 

“Which girl? — Tall girl with red 
hair — did fancy dance ? Yes — why ? ” 

“Well, I’ve been thinking about her 
lately,” said Van Bibber, “and what they 
said of her dancing. It seems to me that 
if it ’s as good as they thought it was, the 
girl ought to be told of it and encouraged. 
They evidently meant what they said. It 
was n’t as though they were talking about 
her to her relatives and had to say some- 
thing pleasant. Lester thought she could 
make a hundred dollars a week if she 
had had six lessons. Well, six lessons 
would n’t cost much, not more than ten 
dollars at the most, and a hundred a week 
for an original outlay of ten is a good 
investment.” 

Travers nodded his head in assent, and 
whacked an egg viciously with his spoon. 
“What’s your scheme?” he said. “Is 
your idea to help the lady for her own 
sake — sort of a philanthropic snap — or 
as a speculation ? We might make it pay 
24 


Cinderella 


I as a speculation. You see nobody knows 
I about her except you and me. We might 
form her into a sort of stock company 
I and teach her to dance, and secure her 
j engagements and then take our com- 
! mission out of her salary. Is that what 
i you were thinking of doing ? ” 

“ No, that was not my idea,’’ said Van 
Bibber, smiling. “ I had n’t any plan. I 
just thought I ’d go down to that hotel 
i and tell her that in the opinion of the 
. four people best qualified to know what 
good dancing is, she is a good dancer, and 
I then leave the rest to her. She must have 
some friends or relations who would help 
her to take a start. If it ’s true that she 
can make a hit as a dancer, it seems a pity 
; that she should n’t know it, does n’t it ? 
If she succeeded, she ’d make a pot of 
' money, and if she failed she ’d be just 
where she is now.” 

Travers considered this subject deeply, 
with knit brows. 

“ That ’s so,” he said. “ I ’ll tell you 
what let ’s do. Let ’s go see some of the 

25 


Cinderella 


managers of those continuous-performance 
places, and tell them we have a dark 
horse that the Grahame Wests and Letty 
Chamberlain herself and George Lester 
think is the coming dancer of the age, 
and ask them to give her a chance. And 
we ’ll make some sort of a contract with 
them. We ought to fix it so that she is to 
get bigger money the longer they keep her 
in the bill, have her salary on a rising 
scale. Come on,” he exclaimed, warm- -I 
ing to the idea. “ Let ’s go now. What ' 
have you got to do ? ” 

“ I ’ve got nothing better to do than 
just that,” Van Bibber declared briskly. 

The managers whom they interviewed 
were interested but non-committal. They 
agreed that the girl must be a remarkable 
dancer indeed to warrant such praise from 
such authorities, but they wanted to see 
her and judge for themselves, and they 
asked to be given her address, which the 
impresarios refused to disclose. But they 
secured from the managers the names of 
several men who taught fancy dancing, 
26 


Cinderella 


and who prepared aspirants for the vaude- 
ville stage, and having obtained from them 
their prices and their opinion as to how 
long a time would be required to give the 
finishing touches to a dancer already 
accomplished in the art, they directed their 
steps to the Hotel Salisbury. 

‘^‘From the Seventh Story to the 
Stage,’’’ said Travers. ‘‘She will make 
very good newspaper paragraphs, won’t 
she ? ‘ The New American Dancer, 
endorsed by Celestine Terrell, Letty 
Chamberlain, and Cortlandt Van Bibber.’ 
And we could get her outside engage- 
ments to dance at studios and evening 
parties after her regular performance, 
could n’t we ? ” he continued. “ She 
ought to ask from fifty to a hundred 
dollars a night. With her regular salary 
that would average about three hundred 
and fifty a week. She is probably making 
three dollars a week now, and eats in the 
servants’ hall.” 

“ And then we will send her abroad,” 
interrupted Van Bibber, taking up the 
27 


Cinderella 


tale, “ and she will do the music halls in 
London. If she plays three halls a night, 
say one on the Surrey side, and Islington, 
and a smart West End hall like the 
Empire or the Alhambra, at fifteen guineas 
a turn, that would bring her in five 
hundred and twenty-five dollars a week. 
And then she would go to the Folies 
Bergere in Paris, and finally to Petersburg 
and Milan, and then come back to dance 
in the Grand Opera season, under Gus 
Harris, with a great international reputa- 
tion, and hung with flowers and medals 
and diamond sun-bursts and things.” 

“ Rather,” said Travers, shaking his 
head enthusiastically. “ And after that we 
must invent a new dance for her, with 
colored lights and mechanical snaps and 
things, and have it patented ; and finally 
she will get her picture on soda-cracker 
boxes and cigarette advertisements, and 
have a race-horse named after her, and 
give testimonials for nerve tonics and soap. 
Does fame reach farther than that ? ” 

‘‘ I think not,” said Van Bibber, un- 
28 


Cinderella 


less they give her name to a new make of 
bicycle. We must give her a new name, 
ianyway, and rechristen her, whatever her 
iname may be. We’ll call her Cinderella 
— La Cinderella. That sounds fine, 
I does n’t it, even if it is rather long for 
the very largest type.” 

“ It is n’t much longer than Carmen- 
cita,” suggested the other. “ And people 
who have the proud knowledge of know- 
ing her like you and me will call her 
‘ Cinders ’ for short. And when we read 
of her dancing before the Czar of All the 
Russias, and leading the ballet at the 
Grand Opera House in Paris, we’ll say, 
‘ That is our handiwork,” and we will feel 
that we have not lived in vain.” 

“ Seventh floor, please,” said Van Bibber 
to the elevator boy. 

The elevator boy was a young man of 
serious demeanor, with a smooth-shaven 
face and a square, determined jaw. There 
was something about him which seemed 
familiar, but Van Bibber could not deter- 
29 


Cinderella 


mine just what it was. The elevator 
stopped to allow some people to leave it J 
at the second floor, and as the young man i 
shoved the door to again, Van Bibber 
asked him if he happened to know of a 
chambermaid with red hair, a tall girl on 
the seventh floor, a girl who danced very 
well. 

The wire rope of the elevator slipped 
less rapidly through the hands of the 
young man who controlled it, and he 
turned and fixed his eyes with sudden 
interest on Van Bibber’s face, and scru- 
tinized him and his companion with serious 
consideration. 

“Yes, I know her — I know who you 
mean, anyway,” he said. “ Why ? ” 

“Why?” echoed Van Bibber, raising 
his eyes. “We wish to see her on a 
matter of business. Can you tell me her 
name ? ” 

The elevator was running so slowly 
now that its movement upward was barely 
perceptible. 

“ Her name’s Annie — Annie Crehan. 

30 


Cinderella 


Excuse me,” said the young man, doubt- 
fully, “ ain’t you the young fellows who 
came to our ball with that English lady, 
the one that sung ? ” 

‘‘ Yes,” Van Bibber assented pleas- 
antly. “We were there. That ’s where 
I ’ve seen you before. You were there, 
too, were n’t you ? ” 

“ Me and Annie was dancing together 
most all the evening. I seen all youse 
watching her.” 

“Of course,” exclaimed Van Bibber. 
“ I remember you now. Oh, then you 
must know her quite well. Maybe you 
can help us. We want to put her on the 
stage.” 

The elevator came to a stop with an 
abrupt jerk, and the young man shoved 
his hands behind him, and leaned back 
against one of the mirrors in its side. 

“ On the stage,” he repeated. “ Why ? ” 
Van Bibber smiled and shrugged his 
shoulders in some embarrassment at this 
peremptory challenge. But there was 
nothing in the young man’s tone or man- 

31 


Cinderella 


ner that could give offence. He seemed 
much in earnest, and spoke as though they 
must understand that he had some right to 
question. 

“ Why ? Because of her dancing. 
She is a very remarkable dancer. All of 
those actors with us that night said so. 
You must know that yourself better than 
any one else, since you can dance with 
her. She could make quite a fortune as a 
dancer, and we have persuaded several 
managers to promise to give her a trial. 
And if she needs money to pay for 
lessons, or to buy the proper dresses and 
slippers and things, we are willing to give 
it to her, or to lend it to her, if she would 
like that better.” 

“ Why ? ” repeated the young man, 
immovably. His manner was not en- 
couraging. 

“ Why — what ? ” interrupted Travers, 
with growing impatience. 

“ Why are you willing to give her 
money? You don’t know her.” 

Van Bibber looked at Travers, and 
32 


Cinderella 


: Travers smiled in some annoyance. The 
I electric bell rang violently from different 
! floors, but the young man did not heed it. 

' He had halted the elevator between two 
I landings, and he now seated himself on the 
I velvet cushions and crossed one leg over 
the other, as though for a protracted 
j debate. Travers gazed about him in 
I humorous apprehension, as though alarmed 
j at the position in which he found himself, 

I hung as it were between the earth and 
sky. 

‘‘ I swear I am an unarmed man,” he 
said in a whisper. 

“ Our intentions are well meant, I 
assure you,” said Van Bibber, with an 
amused smile. “ The girl is working ten 
hours a day for very little money, isn’t 
she ? You know she is, when she could 
make a great deal of money by working 
half as hard. We have some influence 
with theatrical people, and we meant 
merely to put her in the way of bettering 
her position, and to give her the chance to 
do something which she can do better 
3 33 


Cinderella 


than many others, while almost any one, I 
take it, can sweep and make beds. If she 
were properly managed, she could become 
a great dancer, and delight thousands of 
people — add to the gayety of nations, as 
it were. She’s hardly doing that now, 
is she ? Have you any objections to that ? 
What right have you to make objections, 
anyway ? ” 

The young man regarded the two young 
gentlemen before him with a dogged 
countenance, but there was now in his 
eyes a look of helplessness and of great 
disquietude. 

“We ’re engaged to be married, Annie 
and me,” he said. “ That ’s it.” 

“ Oh,” exclaimed Van Bibber, “ I beg 
your pardon. That ’s different. Well, 
in that case, you can help us very much, 
if you wish. We leave it entirely with 
you ! ” 

“ I don’t want that you should leave it 
with me,” said the young man, harshly. 

“ I don’t want to have nothing to do with 
it. Annie can speak for herself. I knew j 


Cinderella 


it was coming to this,” he said, leaning 
forward and clasping his hands together, 
“ or something like this. I Ve never felt 
dead sure of Annie, never once. I always 
knew something would happen.” 

“ Why, nothing has happened,” said 
Van Bibber, soothingly. ‘‘You would 
both benefit by it. We would be as will- 
ing to help two as one. You would both 
be better oifi.” 

The young man raised his head and 
stared at Van Bibber reprovingly. 

“ You know better than that,” he said. 
“You know what I’d look like. Of 
course she could make money as a dancer, 
I ’ve known that for some time, but she 
has n’t thought of it yet, and she ’d never 
have thought of it herself. But the 
question is n’t me or what I want. It ’s 
Annie.! Is she going to be happier or not, 
that’s the question. And I ’m telling you 
that she could n’t be any happier than she 
is now. I know that, too. We’re just 
as contented as two folks ever was. 
We’ve been saving for three months, and 
35 


Cinderella 


buying furniture from the instalment 
people, and next month we were going to 
move into a flat on Seventh Avenue, quite 
handy to the hotel. If she goes onto the 
stage could she be any happier ? And if 
you ’re honest in saying you ’re thinking 
of the two of us — I ask you where would 
I come in ? I ’ll be pulling this wire rope 
and she’ll be all over the country, and her 
friends won’t be my friends and her ways 
won’t be my ways. She ’ll get out of 
reach of me in a week, and I won’t be in 
it. I ’m not the sort to go loafing round 
while my wife supports me, carrying her 
satchel for her. And there ’s nothing I 
can do but just this. She ’d come back 
here some day and live in the front floor 
suite, and I ’d pull her up and down in 
this elevator. That ’s what will happen. 
Here ’s what you two gentlemen are 
doing.” The young man leaned forward 
eagerly. ‘‘You’re offering a change to 
two people that are as well off now as 
they ever hope to be, and they ’re con- 
tented. We don’t know nothin’ better. 

36 


Cinderella 


: Now, are you dead sure that you ’re giving 
I us something better than what we ’ve got ? 
I You can’t make me any happier than I 
j am, and as far as Annie knows, up to now, 
she could n’t be better fixed, and no one 
could care for her more. 

‘‘ My God ! gentlemen,” he cried des- 
perately, think ! She ’s all I ’ve got. 
There ’s lots of dancers, but she ’s not a 
dancer to me, she ’s just Annie. I don’t 
want her to delight the gayety of nations. 
I want her for myself. Maybe I ’m 
selfish, but I can’t help that. She ’s 
mine, and you ’re trying to take her away 
from me. Suppose she was your girl, and 
some one was sneaking her away from 
you. You’d try to stop it, wouldn’t you, 
if she was all you had ? ” He stopped 
breathlessly and stared alternately from 
one to the other of the young men before 
him. Their countenances showed an 
expression of well-bred concern. 

“ It ’s for you to judge,” he went on 
helplessly ; “ if you want to take the re- 
sponsibility, well and good, that ’s for you 
37 


Cinderella 

to say. I ’m not stopping you, but she ’s 
all I ’ve got.” 

The young man stopped, and there was 
a pause while he eyed them eagerly. The 
elevator bell rang out again with vicious 
indignation. 

Travers struck at the toe of his boot with 
his stick and straightened his shoulders. 

“ I think you ’re extremely selfish, if 
you ask me,” he said. 

The young man stood up quickly and 
took his elevator rope in both hands. 

‘‘ All right,” he said quietly, “ that, settles 
it. I ’ll take you up to Annie now, and 
you can arrange it with her. I ’m not 
standing in her way.” 

‘‘ Hold on,” protested Van Bibber and 
Travers in a breath. ‘‘Don’t be in such < 
a hurry,” growled Travers. I 

The young man stood immovable, with .j 
his hands on the wire and looking down j 
on them, his face full of doubt and distress, i 

“ I don’t want to stand in Annie’s way,” H 
he repeated, as though to himself. “ I ’ll I 
do whatever you say. I ’ll take you to I 

38 I 


Cinderella 


the seventh floor or I ’ll drop you to the 
street. It ’s up to you, gentlemen,” he 
added helplessly, and turning his back to 
them threw his arm against the wall of 
the elevator and buried his face upon it. 

There was an embarrassing pause, dur- 
ing which Van Bibber scowled at himself 
in the mirror opposite, as though to ask it 
what a man who looked like that should 
do under such trying circumstances. 

He turned at last and stared at Travers. 

‘ Where ignorance is bliss, it ’s folly to 
be wise,’ ” he whispered, keeping his face 
toward his friend. ‘‘ What do you say ? 
Personally I don’t see myself in the part 
of Providence. It ’s the case of the poor 
man and his one ewe lamb, is n’t it ? ” 

“We don’t want his ewe lamb, do 
we ? ” growled Travers. “ It ’s a case of 
the dog in a manger, I say. I thought 
we were going to be fairy godfathers to 
‘ La Cinderella.’ ” 

“The lady seems to be supplied with 
a most determined godfather as it is,” 
returned Van Bibber. 


39 


Cinderella 


The elevator boy raised his face and 
stared at them with haggard eyes. 

“ Well ? ” he begged. 

Van Bibber smiled upon him reassur- 
ingly, with a look partly of respect and 
partly of pity. 

“ Y ou can drop us to the street,” he 
said. 




40 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 


YOUNG man runs two chances 



rv of marrying the wrong woman. 
He marries her because she is beautiful, 
and because he persuades himself that 
every other lovable attribute must be asso- 
ciated with such beauty, or because she is 
in love with him. If this latter is the 
case, she gives certain values tc^what he 
thinks and to what he says which no other 
woman gives, and so he observes to him- 
self, “ This is the woman who best under- 
stands me.^^ 

You can reverse this and say that young 
women run the same risks, but as men 
are seldom beautiful, the first danger is 
eliminated. Women still marry men, 
however, because they are loved by them, 
and in time the woman grows to depend 
upon this love and to need it, and is not 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

content without it, and so she consents 
to marry the man for no other reason than 
because he cares for her. For if a dog, 
even, runs up to you wagging his tail and 
acting as though he were glad to see you, 
you pat him on the head and say, ‘‘ What 
a nice dog ! ” You like him because he 
likes you, and not because he belongs to 
a fine breed of animal and could take blue 
ribbons at bench shows. 

This is the story of a young man who 
was in love with a beautiful woman, and 
who allowed her beauty to compensate 
him for many other things. When she 
failed to understand what he said to her he 
smiled and looked at her and forgave her 
at once, and when she began to grow 
uninteresting, he would take up his hat and 
go away, and so he never knew how very 
uninteresting she might possibly be if she 
were given time enough in which to 
demonstrate the fact. He never consid- 
ered that, were he married to her, he 
could not take up his hat and go away 
when she became uninteresting, and that 
42 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

her remarks, which were not brilliant, 
could not be smiled away either. They 
would rise up and greet him every morn- 
ing, and would be the last thing he would 
hear at night. 

Miss Delamar’s beauty was so conspicu- 
ous that to pretend not to notice it was 
more foolish than well-bred. You got 
along more easily and simply by accepting 
it at once, and referring to it, and enjoy- 
ing its effect upon other people. To go 
out of one’s way to talk of other things 
when every one, even Miss Delamar her- 
self, knew what must be uppermost in 
your mind, always seemed as absurd as to 
strain a point in politeness, and to pre- 
tend not to notice that a guest had upset 
his claret, or any other embarrassing 
fact. For Miss Delamar’s beauty was so 
distinctly embarrassing that this was the 
only way to meet it, — to smile and pass 
it over and to try, if possible, to get on to 
something else. It was on account of 
this extraordinary quality in her appear- 
ance that every one considered her beauty 
43 


Miss Delamar's Understudy 

as something which transcended her pri- 
vate ownership, and which belonged by- 
right to the polite world at large, to any 
one who could appreciate it properly, just 
as though it were a sunset or a great work 
of art or of nature. And so, when she 
gave away her photographs no one thought 
it meant anything more serious than a 
recognition on her part of the fact that it 
would have been unkind and selfish in her 
not to have shared the enjoyment of so 
much loveliness with others. 

Consequently, when she sent one of her 
largest and most aggravatingly beautiful 
photographs to young Stuart, it was no 
sign that she cared especially for him. 

How much young Stuart cared for 
Miss Delamar, however, was an open 
question, and a condition yet to be dis- 
covered. That he cared for some one, 
and cared so much that his imagination 
had begun to picture the awful joys and 
responsibilities of marriage, was only too 
well known to himself, and was a state 
of mind already suspected by his friends. 

44 


Miss Delamar's Understudy 

Stuart was a member of the New York 
bar, and the distinguished law firm to 
which he belonged was very proud of its 
junior member, and treated him with 
indulgence and affection, which was not 
unmixed with amusement. For Stuart's 
legal knowledge had been gathered in 
many odd corners of the globe, and was 
various and peculiar. It had been his 
pleasure to study the laws by which men 
ruled other men in every condition of life, 
and under every sun. The regulations of 
a new mining camp were fraught with as 
great interest to him as the accumulated 
precedents of the English Constitution, 
and he had investigated the rulings of the 
mixed courts of Egypt and of the govern- 
ment of the little Dutch republic near the 
Cape with as keen an effort to compre- 
hend, as he had shown in studying the 
laws of the American colonies and of the 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 

But he was not always serious, and it 
sometimes happened that after he had 
arrived at some queer little island where 
45 


Miss Delamar's Understudy 

the native prince and the English governor 
sat in judgment together, his interest in 
the intricacies of their laws would give 
way to the more absorbing occupation of 
chasing wild boar or shooting at tigers 
from the top of an elephant. And so he 
was not only regarded as an authority on 
many forms of government and of law, 
into which no one else had ever taken the 
trouble to look, but his books on big game 
were eagerly read and his articles in 
the magazines were earnestly discussed, 
whether they told of the divorce laws of 
Dakota, and the legal rights of widows in 
Cambodia, or the habits of the Mexican 
lion. 

Stuart loved his work better than he 
knew, but how well he loved Miss Dela- 
mar neither he nor his friends could tell. 
She was the most beautiful and lovely 
creature that he had ever seen, and of that 
only was he certain. 

Stuart was sitting in the club one day 
when the conversation turned to matri- 
mony. He was among his own particular 
46 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

friends, the men before whom he could 
speak seriously or foolishly without fear of 
being misunderstood or of having what he 
said retold and spoiled in the telling. 
There was Seldon, the actor, and Rives, 
j who painted pictures, and young Sloane, 
I who travelled for pleasure and adventure, 
and Weimer, who stayed at home and 
I wrote for the reviews. They were all 
i bachelors, and very good friends, and 
I jealously guarded their little circle from 
the intrusion of either men or women. 

“ Of course the chief objection to mar- 
riage,"’ Stuart said — it was the very day in 
which the picture had been sent to his 
rooms — ‘‘is the old one that you can’t 
tell anything about it until you are com- 
mitted to it forever. It is a very silly 
thing to discuss even, because there is no 
way of bringing it about, but there really 
should be some sort of a preliminary trial. 
As the man says in the play, ‘you would n’t 
buy a watch without testing it first.’ You 
don’t buy a hat even without putting it on, 
and finding out whether it is becoming or 
47 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

not, or whether your peculiar style of ugli- 
ness can stand it. And yet men go gayly 
off and get married, and make the most 
awful promises, and alter their whole order 
of life and risk the happiness of some 
lovely creature on trust, as it were, know- 
ing absolutely nothing of the new condi- 
tions and responsibilities of the life before 
them. Even a river pilot has to serve an 
apprenticeship before he gets a license, and 
yet we are allowed to take just as great 
risks, and only because we want to take 
them. It ’s awful, and it ’s all wrong.’’ 

“Well, I don’t see what one is going to 
do about it,” commented young Sloane, 
lightly, “ except to get divorced. That 
road is always open.” 

Sloane was starting the next morning 
for the Somali Country, in Abyssinia, to 
shoot rhinoceros, and his interest in matri- 
mony was in consequence somewhat slight. 

“ It is n’t the fear of the responsibilities 
that keeps Stuart, nor any one of us back,” 
said Weimer, contemptuously. “It’s be- 
cause we ’re selfish. That ’s the whole 
48 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

truth of the matter. We love our work, 
or our pleasure, or to knock about the 
world, better than we do any particular 
woman. When one of us comes to love 
the woman best, his conscience won’t 
trouble him long about the responsibilities 
of marrying her.” 

“ Not at all,” said Stuart, “ I am quite 
sincere ; I maintain that there should be a 
preliminary stage. Of course there can’t 
be, and it ’s absurd to think of it, but it 
would save a lot of unhappiness.” 

“Well,” said Seldon, dryly, “when 
you ’ve invented a way to prevent marriage 
from being a lottery, let me know, will 
you ? ” He stood up and smiled ner- 
vously. “Any of you coming to see us 
to-night ? ” he asked. 

“That’s so,” exclaimed Weimer, “I 
forgot. It’s the first night of ‘A Fool 
and His Money,’ isn’t it? Of course 
we ’re coming.” 

“ I told them to put a box away for you 
in case you wanted it,” Seldon continued. 
“ Don’t expect much. It ’s a silly piece, 
4 49 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

and I Ve a silly part, and I ’m very bad in 
it. You must come around to supper, and 
tell me where I ’m bad in it, and we will 
talk it over. You coming, Stuart ? ” 

“ My dear old man,” said Stuart, re- 
proachfully. “ Of course I am. I Ve had 
my seats for the last three weeks. Do 
you suppose I could miss hearing you mis- 
pronounce all the Hindostanee I Ve taught 
you ? ” 

“ Well, good-night then,” said the actor, 
waving his hands to his friends as he 
moved away. “‘We, who are about to 
die, salute you ! ’ ” 

“ Good luck to you,” said Sloane, hold- 
ing up his glass. “To the Fool and His 
Money,” he laughed. He turned to the 
table again, and sounded the bell for the 
waiter. “Now let’s send him a telegram 
and wish him success, and all sign it,” he 
said, “and don’t you fellows tell him that 
I was n’t in front to-night. I ’ve got to go 
to a dinner the Travellers’ Club are giving 
me.” There was a protesting chorus of 
remonstrance. “ Oh, I don’t like it any 

50 


Miss Delamar s Understudy 

better than you do,” said Sloane, “ but I ’ll 
get away early and join you before the 
play’s over. No one in the Travellers’ 
Club, you see, has ever travelled farther 
from New York than London or the 
Riviera, and so when a member starts for 
Abyssinia they give him a dinner, and he 
has to take himself very seriously indeed, 
and cry with Seldon, ‘ I who am about to 
die, salute you.’ If that man there was 
any use,” he added, interrupting himself 
and pointing with his glass at Stuart, “ he ’d 
pack up his things to-night and come with 
me.” 

“ Oh, don’t urge him,” remonstrated 
Weimer, who had travelled all over the 
world in imagination, with the aid of 
globes and maps, but never had got any 
farther from home than Montreal. “We 
can’t spare Stuart. He has to stop here 
and invent a preliminary marriage state, 
so that if he finds he does n’t like a girl, 
he can leave her before it is too late.” 

“You sail at seven, I believe, and from 
Hoboken, don’t you ? ” asked Stuart, un- 

51 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

disturbed. “ If you ’ll start at eleven from 
the New York side, I think I ’ll go with 
you, but I hate getting up early ; and 
then you see — I know what dangers 
lurk in Abyssinia, but who could tell what 
might not happen to him in Hoboken ? ” 
When Stuart returned to his room, he ^ 
found a large package set upright in an 
armchair and enveloped by many wrap- ; 
pings ; but the handwriting on the outside 
told him at once from whom it came and 
what it might be, and he pounced upon it 
eagerly and tore it from its covers. The •' 
photograph was a very large one, and the 
likeness to the original so admirable that • 
the face seemed to smile and radiate with j 
all the loveliness and beauty of Miss ' 
Delamar herself. Stuart beamed upon it 
with genuine surprise and pleasure, and | 
exclaimed delightedly to himself. There j 
was a living quality about the picture j 
which made him almost speak to it, and : 
thank Miss Delamar through it for the 
pleasure she had given him and the honor 
she had bestowed. He was proud, flat- 

52 


Miss Delamar's Understudy 

tered, and triumphant, and while he walked 
about the room deciding where he would 
place it, and holding the picture respect- 
fully before him, he smiled upon it with 
grateful satisfaction. 

He decided against his dressing-table 
as being too intimate a place for it, and so 
carried the picture on from his bedroom 
to the dining-room beyond, where he set 
it among his silver on the sideboard. 
But so little of his time was spent in this 
room that he concluded he would derive 
but little pleasure from it there, and so 
bore it back again into his library, where 
there were many other photographs and 
portraits, and where to other eyes than his 
own it would be less conspicuous. 

He tried it first in one place and then 
in another ; but in each position the pic- 
ture predominated and asserted itself so 
markedly, that Stuart gave up the idea of 
keeping it inconspicuous, and placed it 
prominently over the fireplace, where it 
reigned supreme above every other object 
in the room. It was not only the most 
53 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

conspicuous object there, but the living 
quality which it possessed in so marked a 
degree, and which was due to its natural- 
ness of pose and the excellence of the 
likeness, made it permeate the place like a 
presence and with the individuality of a 
real person. Stuart observed this effect 
with amused interest, and noted also that 
the photographs of other women had 
become commonplace in comparison like 
lithographs in a shop window, and that 
the more masculine accessories of a bach- 
elor’s apartment had grown suddenly ag- 
gressive and out of keeping. The liquor 
case and the racks of arms and of barbarous 
weapons which he had collected with such 
pride seemed to have lost their former 
value and meaning, and he instinctively 
began to gather up the mass of books 
and maps and photographs and pipes and 
gloves which lay scattered upon the table, 
and to put them in their proper place, or 
to shove them out of sight altogether. 
“ If I ’m to live up to that picture,” he 
thought, I must see that George keeps 
54 


Miss Delamar's Understudy 

this room in better order — and I must 
I stop wandering round here in my bath- 
j robe.” 

] His mind continued on the picture while 
I he was dressing, and he was so absorbed 
I in it and in analyzing the effect it had had 
upon him, that his servant spoke twice 
before he heard him. 

“ No,” he answered, ‘‘ I shall not dine 
here to-night.” Dining at home was with 
him a very simple affair, and a somewhat 
lonely one, and he avoided it almost nightly 
by indulging himself in a more expensive 
fashion. 

But even as he spoke an idea came to 
Stuart which made him reconsider his 
determination, and which struck him as 
so amusing that he stopped pulling at his 
tie and smiled delightedly at himself in the 
glass before him. 

‘‘ Yes,” he said, still smiling, “ I will 
dine here to-night. Get me anything in 
a hurry. You need not wait now; go 
get the dinner up as soon as possible.” 

The effect which the photograph of 

55 


Miss Delamar's Understudy 

Miss Delamar had upon him, and the 
transformation it had accomplished in his 
room, had been as great as would have 
marked the presence there of the girl her- 
self. While considering this it had come 
to Stuart, like a flash of inspiration, that 
here was a way by which he could test the 
responsibilities and conditions of married 
life without compromising either himself, 
or the girl to whom he would suppose 
himself to be married. 

“ I will put that picture at the head of 
the table,” he said, “ and I will play that 
it is she herself, her own, beautiful, lovely 
self, and I will talk to her and exchange 
views with her, and make her answer me 
just as she would were we actually married 
and settled.” He looked at his watch and 
found it was just seven o’clock. “ I will 
begin now,” he said, “ and I will keep up 
the delusion until midnight. To-night is 
the best time to try the experiment because 
the picture is new now, and its influence 
will be all the more real. In a few weeks 
it may have lost some of its freshness and 

56 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

reality and will have become one of the 
fixtures in the room.” 

Stuart decided that under these new 
conditions it would be more pleasant to 
dine at Delmonico’s, and he was on the 
point of asking the Picture what she 
thought of it, when he remembered that 
while it had been possible for him to make 
a practice of dining at that place as a 
bachelor, he could not now afford so ex- 
pensive a luxury, and he decided that he 
had better economize in that particular and 
go instead to one of the table d’hote 
restaurants in the neighborhood. He 
regretted not having thought of this 
sooner, for he did not care to dine at a 
table d’hote in evening dress, as in some 
places it rendered him conspicuous. So, 
sooner than have this happen, he decided 
to dine at home, as he had originally 
intended when he first thought of attempt- 
ing this experiment, and then conducted 
the picture into dinner and placed her in 
an armchair facing him, with the candles 
full upon the face. 


57 


Miss Delamar's Understudy 

“Now this is something like,” he ex- 
claimed joyously. “ I can’t imagine any- 
thing better than this. Here we are all 
to ourselves with no one to bother us, 
with no chaperone, or chaperone’s husband 
either, which is generally worse. Why is 
it, my dear,” he asked gayly, in a tone 
that he considered affectionate and hus- 
bandly, “ that the attractive chaperones 
are always handicapped by such stupid 
husbands, and vice versa ? ” 

“ If that is true,” replied the Picture, or 
replied Stuart, rather, for the picture, “ I 
cannot be a very attractive chaperone.” 
Stuart bowed politely at this, and then 
considered the point it had raised as to 
whether he had, in assuming both charac- 
ters, the right to pay himself compliments. 
He decided against himself in this particu- 
lar instance, but agreed that he was not 
responsible for anything the Picture might 
say, so long as he sincerely and fairly tried 
to make it answer him as he thought the 
original would do under like circumstances. 
From what he knew of the original undei 

58 


Miss Delamar's Understudy 

: other conditions, he decided that he could 
i give a very close imitation of her point of 
view. 

Stuart’s interest in his dinner was so 
real that he found himself neglecting his 
: wife, and he had to pull himself up to his 
I duty with a sharp reproof. After smiling 
back at her for a moment or two until his 
servant had again left them alone, he 
asked her to tell him what she had been 
doing during the day. 

‘‘ Oh, nothing very important,” said the 
Picture. “ I went shopping in the morn- 
ing and — ” 

Stuart stopped himself and considered 
this last remark doubtfully. “ Now, how 
do I know she would go shopping ? ” he 
asked himself. “ People from Harlem 
and women who like bargain counters, and 
who eat chocolate meringue for lunch, and 
then stop in at a continuous performance, 
go shopping. It must be the comic-paper 
sort of wives who go about matching 
shades and buying hooks and eyes. Yes, 
I must have made Miss Delamar’s under- 
59 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

study misrepresent her. I beg your par- 
don, my dear,’’ he said aloud to the 
Picture. “ You did not go shopping this 
morning. You probably went to a wo- 
man’s luncheon somewhere. Tell me 
about that.” 

“ Oh, yes, I went to lunch with the 
Antwerps,” said the Picture, “ and they 
had that Russian woman there who is get- 
ting up subscriptions for the Siberian 
prisoners. It ’s rather fine of her because 
it exiles her from Russia. And she is a 
princess.” 

‘‘ That ’s nothing,” Stuart interrupted, 
“ they ’re all princesses when you see them 
on Broadway.” 

“ I beg your pardon,” said the Picture. 

“ It ’s of no consequence,” said Stuart, 
apologetically, it ’s a comic song. I 
forgot you did n’t like comic songs. Well 
— go on.” 

“ Oh, then I went to a tea, and then I 
stopped in to hear Madame Ruvier read a 
paper on the Ethics of Ibsen, and she — ” 

Stuart’s voice had died away gradually, 
6o 


Miss Delamar's Understudy 

and he caught himself wondering whether 
he had told George to lay in a fresh 
supply of cigars. “ I beg your pardon,” 
he said briskly, “ I was listening, but I 
was just wondering whether I had any 
cigars left. You were saying that you 
had been at Madame Ruvier’s, and — ” 

“ I am afraid that you were not inter- 
ested,” said the Picture. “ Never mind, 
it ’s my fault. Sometimes I think I ought 
to do things of more interest, so that I 
should have something to talk to you about 
when you come home.” 

Stuart wondered at what hour he would 
come home now that he was married. As 
a bachelor he had been in the habit of 
stopping on his way up town from the law 
office at the club, or to take tea at the 
houses of the different girls he liked. Of 
course he could not do that now as a 
married man. He would instead have to 
limit his calls to married women, as all the 
other married men of his acquaintance did. 
But at the moment he could not think of 
any attractive married women who would 

6i 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

like his dropping in on them in such a 
familiar manner, and the other sort did , 
not as yet appeal to him. 

He seated himself in front of the coal- 
fire in the library, with the Picture in a 
chair close beside him, and as he puffed , 
pleasantly on his cigar he thought how s 
well this suited him, and how delightful it 
was to find content in so simple and con- 
tinuing a pleasure. He could almost feel 
the pressure of his wife’s hand as it lay in 
his own, as they sat in silent sympathy 
looking into the friendly glow of the fire. 

There was a long pleasant pause. 

“ They ’re giving Sloane a dinner to- 
night at the ‘Travellers,’” Stuart said at 
last, “ in honor of his going to Abyssinia.” 

Stuart pondered for some short time as 
to what sort of a reply Miss Delamar’s 
understudy ought to make to this innocent 
remark. He recalled the fact that on 
numerous occasions the original had shown 
not only a lack of knowledge in far-away 
places, but what was more trying, a lack 
of interest as well. For the moment he 
62 


Miss Delamar's Understudy 

could not see her robbed of her pretty 
environment and tramping through undis- 
covered countries at his side. So the 
Picture’s reply, when it came, was strictly 
in keeping with several remarks which 
Miss Delamar herself had made to him 
in the past. 

‘‘Yes,” said the Picture, politely, “ and 
I where is Abyssinia — in India, is n’t it ? ” 

I “No, not exactly,” corrected Stuart, 
t mildly ; “ you pass it on your way to 
India, though, as you go through the Red 
Sea. Sloane is taking Winchesters with 
him and a double express and a ‘five fifty.’ 
He wants to test their penetration. I 
think myself that the express is the best, 
but he says Selous and Chanler think very 
i highly of the Winchester. I don’t know, 
j I never shot a rhinoceros. The time I 

I ’ killed that elephant,” he went on, pointing 
at two tusks that stood with some assegais 
in a corner, “ I used an express, and I 
had to let go with both barrels. I sup- 
pose, though, if I ’d needed a third shot 
I’d have wished it was a Winchester. 

I 63 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

He was charging the smoke, you see, and 
I could n’t get away because I ’d caught 
my foot — but I told you about that, 
did n’t I ? ” Stuart interrupted himself to 
ask politely. 

“ Yes,” said the Picture, cheerfully, “ I 
remember it very well ; it was very foolish 
of you.” 

Stuart straightened himself with a slightly 
injured air and avoided the Picture’s eye. 
He had been stopped midway in what was 
one of his favorite stories, and it took a 
brief space of time for him to recover him- 
self, and to sink back again into the 
pleasant lethargy in which he had been 
basking. 

“ Still,” he said, “ I think the express is 
the better gun.” 

“ Oh, is an ‘ express ’ a gun ? ” ex- 
claimed the Picture, with sudden interest. 
‘‘ Of course, I might have known.” 

Stuart turned in his chair and surveyed 
the Picture in some surprise. “ But, my 
dear girl,” he remonstrated kindly, why 
did n’t you ask, if you did n’t know what 
64 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

I was talking about. What did you 
! suppose it was ? ” 

1 “ I did r/t know,” said the Picture, ‘‘ I 

i thought it was something to do with his 
I luggage. Abyssinia sounds so far away,” 
she explained, smiling sweetly. “You 
can’t expect one to be interested in such 
I queer places, can you ? ” 

“ No,” Stuart answered reluctantly, 
and looking steadily at the fire, “ I sup- 
pose not. But you see, my dear,” he said, 
“ I ’d have gone with him, if I had n’t 
married you, and so I am naturally inter- 
ested in his outfit. They wanted me to 
make a comparative study of the little 
semi-independent states down there, and 
: of how far the Italian government allows 
them to rule themselves. That ’s what I 
was to have done.” 

But the Picture hastened to reassure 
him. “ Oh, you must n’t think,” she 
exclaimed quickly, “ that I mean to keep 
you at home. I love to travel, too. I 
want you to go on exploring places just 
as you ’ve always done, only now I will 
5 65 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

go with you. We might do the Cathedral 
towns, for instance.’’ 

“ The what ! ” gasped Stuart, raising 
his head. “ Oh, yes, of course,” he 
added hurriedly, sinking back into his 
chair with a slightly bewildered expression. 
‘‘ That would be very nice. Perhaps 
your mother would like to go too ; it ’s 
not a dangerous expedition, is it ? I was 
thinking of taking you on a trip through 
the South Seas — but I suppose the 
Cathedral towns are just as exciting. 
Or we might even penetrate as far into 
the interior as the English lakes and 
read Wordsworth and Coleridge as we 

go-” 

Miss Delamar’s understudy observed 
him closely for a moment, but he made 
no sign, and so she turned her eyes again 
to the fire with a slightly troubled look. 
She had not a strong sense of humor, but 
she was very beautiful. 

Stuart’s conscience troubled him for 
the next few moments, and he endeavored 
to make up for his impatience of the 
66 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

moment before, by telling the Picture how 
particularly well she was looking. 

“ It seems almost selfish to keep it all 
to myself,” he mused. 

“You don’t mean,” inquired the Pic- 
ture, with tender anxiety, “ that you want 
any one else here, do you ? I ’m sure I 
could be content to spend every evening 
like this. I ’ve had enough of going out 
and talking to people I don’t care about. 
Two seasons,” she added, with the superior 
air of one who has put away childish 
things, “ was quite enough of it for me.” 

“ Well, I never took it as seriously as 
that,” said Stuart, “ but, of course, I don’t 
want any one else here to spoil our even- 
ing. It is perfect.” 

He assured himself that it was perfect, 
but he wondered what was the loyal thing 
for a married couple to do when the con- 
versation came to a dead stop. And did 
the conversation come to a stop because 
they preferred to sit in silent sympathy 
and communion, or because they had 
nothing interesting to talk about ? Stuart 
67 


Miss Delarriar’s Understudy 

doubted if silence was the truest expres- 
sion of the most perfect confidence and 
sympathy. He generally found when he 
was interested, that either, he or his com- 
panion talked all the time. It was when 
he was bored that he sat silent. But it 
was probably different with married people. 
Possibly they thought of each other during 
these pauses, and of their own affairs and 
interests, and then he asked himself how 
many interests could one fairly retain with 
which the other had nothing to do ? 

‘‘ I suppose,” thought Stuart, ‘‘ that I 
had better compromise and read aloud. 
Should you like me to read aloud ? ” he 
asked doubtfully. 

The Picture brightened perceptibly at 
this, and said that she thought that would 
be charming. “We might make it quite 
instructive,” she suggested, entering eagerly 
into the idea. “We ought to agree to 
read so many pages every night. Suppose 
we begin with Guizot’s ‘ History of 
France.’ I have always meant to read 
that, the illustrations look so interesting.” 

68 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

“ Yes, we might do that,” assented 
Stuart, doubtfully. ‘‘ It is in six volumes, 
is n’t it ? Suppose now, instead,” he sug- 
gested, with an impartial air, “ we begin 
that to-morrow night, and go this evening 
to see Seldon’s new play, ‘ The Fool and 
His Money.’ It ’s not too late, and he 
has saved a box for us, and Weimer and 
Rives and Sloane will be there, and — ” 
The Picture’s beautiful face settled for 
just an instant in an expression of disap- 
pointment. “Of course,” she replied 
slowly, “ if you wish it. But I thought 
you said,” she went on with a sweet 
smile, “ that this was perfect. Now you 
want to go out again. Is n’t this better 
than a hot theatre? You might put up 
with it for one evening, don’t you think? ” 
“ Put up with it ! ” exclaimed Stuart, 
enthusiastically ; “ I could spend every 
evening so. It was only a suggestion. 
It was n’t that I wanted to go so much as 
that I thought Seldon might be a little 
hurt if I did n’t. But I can tell him 
you were not feeling very well, and that 
69 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

we will come some other evening. He 
generally likes to have us there on the 
first night, that ’s all. But he ’ll under- 
stand.” 

“Oh,” said the Picture, “if you put it 
in the light of a duty to your friend, of 
course we will go.” 

“ Not at all,” replied Stuart, heartily ; 
“ I will read something. I should really 
prefer it. How would you like some- 
thing of Browning’s ? ” 

“ Oh, I read all of Browning once,” 
said the Picture, “ I think I should like 
something new.” 

Stuart gasped at this, but said nothing, 
and began turning over the books on the 
centre table. He selected one of the 
monthly magazines, and choosing a story 
which neither of them had read, sat down 
comfortably in front of the fire, and fin- 
ished it without interruption and to the 
satisfaction of the Picture and himself. 
The story had made the half hour pass 
very pleasantly, and they both commented 
on it with interest. 


70 


I Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

“ I had an experience once myself 
something like that,” said Stuart, with a 
pleased smile of recollection; it happened 
i in Paris ” — he began with the deliberation 
I of a man who is sure of his story — “ and 
! it turned out in much the same way. It 
j didn’t begin in Paris; it really began 
i while we were crossing the English Chan- 
|| nel to — ” 

‘‘ Oh, you mean about the Russian who 
I took you for some one else and had you 
followed,” said the Picture. “Yes, that 
was like it, except that in your case 
nothing happened.” 

Stuart took his cigar from between his 
lips and frowned severely at the lighted 
end for some little time before he spoke. 

“ My dear,” he remonstrated gently, 
“ you must n’t tell me I ’ve told you all 
my old stories before. It is n’t fair. Now 
that I ’m married, you see, I can’t go 
about and have new experiences, and 
1 I ’ve got to make use of the old ones.” 

I “ Oh, I ’m so sorry,” exclaimed the 
I Picture, remorsefully. “ I did n’t mean 

71 


Miss Delamar's Understudy 

to be rude. Please tell me about it. I 
should like to hear it again, ever so much. 
I should like to hear it again, really.” 

“ Nonsense,” said Stuart, laughing and 
shaking his head. “ I was only joking ; 
personally I hate people who tell long 
stories. That does n’t matter. I was 
thinking of something else.” 

He continued thinking of something 
else, which was, that though he had been 
in jest when he spoke of having given up 
the chance of meeting fresh experiences, 
he had nevertheless described a condition, 
and a painfully true one. His real life 
seemed to have stopped, and he saw him- 
self in the future looking back and refer- 
ring to it, as though it were the career of 
an entirely different person, of a young 
man, with quick sympathies which re- 
quired . satisfying, as any appetite requires 
food. And he had an uncomfortable 
doubt that these many ever-ready sympa- 
thies would rebel if fed on only one diet. 

The Picture did not interrupt him in 
his thoughts, and he let his mind follow 
72 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

his eyes as they wandered over the objects 
above him on the mantel-shelf. They 
all meant something from the past, — a 
busy, wholesome past which had formed 
habits of thought and action, habits he 
could no longer enjoy alone, and which, 
on the other hand, it was quite impossible 
for him to share with any one else. He 
was no longer to be alone. 

Stuart stirred uneasily in his chair and 
j poked at the fire before him. 

“ Do you remember the day you came 
1 to see me,” said the Picture, sentimentally, 
j “ and built the fire yourself and lighted 
I some girl’s letters to make it burn ? ” 

I “Yes,” said Stuart, “that is, I said 
! that they were some girl’s letters. It 
j made it more picturesque. I am afraid 
1 they were bills. I should say I did re- 
i member it,” he continued enthusiastically. 

I “You wore a black dress and little red 
' slippers with big black rosettes, and you 
! looked as beautiful as — as night — as a 
1 moonlight night.” 

The Picture frowned slightly. 

73 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

“ You are always telling me about how 
I looked,” she complained ; ‘‘ can’t you 
remember any time when we were to- 
gether without remembering what I had on 
and how I appeared ? ” 

‘‘ I cannot,” said Stuart, promptly. I 
can recall lots of other things besides, but I 
can’t forget how you looked. You have a 
fashion of emphasizing episodes in that 
way which is entirely your own. But, as 
I say, I can remember something else. Do 
you remember, for instance, when we 
went up to West Point on that yacht? 
Wasn’t it a grand day, with the autumn 
leaves on both sides of the Hudson, and 
the dress parade, and the dance afterward 
at the hotel ? ” 

‘^Yes, I should think I did,” said the 
Picture, smiling. “You spent all your 
time examining cannon, and talking to the 
men about ‘ firing in open order,’ and left 
me all alone.” 

“ Left you all alone ! I like that,” 
laughed Stuart ; “ all alone with about 

eighteen officers.” 


74 


Miss Delamar's Understudy 

‘‘ Well, but that was natural,’’ returned 
the Picture. They were men. It ’s 
natural for a girl to talk to men, but why 
should a man want to talk to men ? ” 

“Well, I know better than that now,” 
said Stuart. 

He proceeded to show that he knew 
better by remaining silent for the next half 
hour during which time he continued to 
wonder whether this effort to keep up a 
conversation was not radically wrong. He 
thought of several things he might say, 
but he argued that it was an impossible 
situation where a man had to make con- 
versation with his own wife. 

The clock struck ten as he sat waiting, 
and he moved uneasily in his chair. 

“ What is it ? ” asked the Picture ; 
“ what makes you so restless ? ” 

Stuart regarded the Picture timidly for a 
moment before he spoke. “I was just 
thinking,” he said doubtfully, “that we 
might run down after all, and take a look 
in at the last act ; it ’s not too late even 
now. They ’re sure to run behind on the 
75 


Miss Delamar's Understudy 1 

first night. And then,” he urged, we t 
can go around and see Seldon. You have i 
never been behind the scenes, have you ? ■ 
It’s very interesting.” 

“No, I have not, but if we do,” re- 
monstrated the Picture, pathetically, “ you 
know all those men will come trooping i 
home with us. You know they will.” 

“ But that ’s very complimentary,” said 
Stuart. “ Why, I like my friends to like 
my wife.” j 

“Yes, but you know how they stay ; 
when they get here,” she answered ; “ I * 
don’t believe they ever sleep. Don’t you 
remember the last supper you gave me ; 
before we were married, when Mrs. Starr 
and you all were discussing Mr. Seldon’s 
play ? She did n’t make a move to go 
until half-past two, and I was that sleepy, 

I could n’t keep my eyes open.” 

“Yes,” said Stuart, “ I remember. I’m 
sorry. I thought it was very interesting. 
Seldon changed the whole second act on 
account of what she said. Well, after 
this,” he laughed with cheerful despera- 
76 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

tion, “ I think I shall make up for the part 
of a married man in a pair of slippers and 
a dressing-gown, and then perhaps I won’t 
be tempted to roam abroad at night.” 

“ You must wear the gown they are 
1 going to give you at Oxford,” said the 
I Picture, smiling placidly. “ The one Aunt 
Lucy was telling me about. Why do 
|i they give you a gown ? ” she asked. “ It 
I, seems such an odd thing to do.” 

“ The gown comes with the degree, I 
|l believe,” said Stuart. 

^ “ But why do they give you a degree ? ” 

' persisted the Picture; “you never studied 
at Oxford, did you ? ” 

Stuart moved slightly in his chair and 
shook his head. “ I thought I told you,” 

I he said gently. “ No, I never studied 
I there. I wrote some books on — things, 

I and they liked them.” 

“ Oh, yes, I remember now, you did 
tell me,” said the Picture ; “ and I told 
Aunt Lucy about it, and said we would be 
in England during the season, when you 
got your degree, and she said you must be 
77 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

awfully clever to get it. You see — she 
does appreciate you, and you always treat 
her so distantly.” 

“ Do I ? ” said Stuart, quietly ; “I’m 
sorry.” 

“ Will you have your portrait painted 
in it ? ” asked the Picture. 

“ In what ? ” 

“ In the gown. You are not listen- 
ing,” said the Picture, reproachfully. 
“You ought to. Aunt Lucy says it’s a 
beautiful shade of red silk, and very long. 
Is it ? ” 

“ I don’t know,” said Stuart. He 
shook his head, and dropping his chin 
into his hands, stared coldly down into 
the fire. He tried to persuade himself 
that he had been vainglorious, and that he 
had given too much weight to the honor 
which the University of Oxford would 
bestow upon him; that he had taken the 
degree too seriously, and that the Picture’s 
view of it was the view of the rest of the 
world. But he could not convince him- 
self that he was entirely at fault. 

78 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

“ Is it too late to begin on Guizot ? ” 
suggested his Picture, as an alternative to 
his plan. “ It sounds so improving,” 

“Yes, it is much too late,” answered 
Stuart, decidedly. “ Besides, I don’t 
want to be improved. I want to be 
amused, or inspired, or scolded. The 
chief good of friends is that they do one 
of these three things, and a wife should 
do all three.” 

“ Which shall I do ” asked the 
Picture, smiling good-humoredly. 

Stuart looked at the beautiful face and 
at the reclining figure of the woman to 
whom he was to turn for sympathy for 
the rest of his life, and felt a cold shiver 
of terror, that passed as quickly as it 
came. He reached out his hand and 
placed it on the arm of the chair where 
his wife’s hand should have been, and 
I patted the place kindly. He would shut 
his eyes to everything but that she was 
good and sweet and his wife. Whatever 
else she lacked that her beauty had covered 
up and hidden, and the want of which had 
79 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

lain unsuspected in their previous formal 
intercourse, could not be mended now. 
He would settle his step to hers, and 
eliminate all those interests from his life 
which were not hers as well. He had 
chosen a beautiful idol, and not a com- 
panion, for a wife. He had tried to 
warm his hands at the fire of a diamond. 

Stuart’s eyes closed wearily as though 
to shut out the memories of the past, or 
the foreknowledge of what the future was 
sure to be. His head sank forward on 
his breast, and with his hand shading his 
eyes, he looked beyond, through the dying 
fire, into the succeeding years. 

The gay little French clock on the 
table sounded the hour of midnight 
briskly, with a pert insistent clamor, and 
at the same instant a boisterous and unruly 
knocking answered it from outside the 
library door. 

Stuart rose uncertainly from his chair and 
surveyed the tiny clock face with a startled 
expression of bewilderment and relief. 

8o 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

“Stuart ! ” his friends called impatiently 
from the hall. “ Stuart, let us in ! ” and 
without waiting further for recognition a 
merry company of gentlemen pushed their 
way noisily into the room. 

“ Where the devil have you been ? ” 
demanded Weimer. “You don’t deserve 
to be spoken to at all after quitting 
us like that. But Seldon is so good- 
natured,” he went on, “ that he sent us 
after you. It was a great success, and he 
made a rattling good speech, and you 
missed the whole thing; and you ought to 
be ashamed of yourself. We’ve asked 
half the people in front to supper — two 
stray Englishmen, all the Wilton girls and 
their governor, and the chap that wrote 
the play. And Seldon and his brother 
Sam are coming as soon as they get their 
make-up off. Don’t stand there like that, 
but hurry. What have you been doing?” 

Stuart gave a nervous, anxious laugh. 
“ Oh, don’t ask me,” he cried. “ It was 
awful. I ’ve been trying an experiment, 
and I had to keep it up until midnight, 

6 8i 


Miss Delamar's Understudy 

and — I’m so glad you fellows have 
come,” he continued, halting midway in 
his explanation. “ I was blue.” 

“You’ve been asleep in front of the 
fire,” said young Sloane, “ and you ’ve 
been dreaming.” 

“ Perhaps,” laughed Stuart, gayly, “ per- 
haps. But I ’m awake now in any event. 
Sloane, old man,” he cried, dropping both 
hands on the youngster’s shoulders. 
“ How much money have you ? Enough 
to take me to Gibraltar ? They can 
cable me the rest.” 

“ Hoorah ! ” shouted Sloane, waltzing 
from one end of the room to the other. 
“ And we ’re off to Ab-yss-in-ia in the 
morn-ing,” he sang. “ There ’s plenty 
in my money belt,” he cried, slapping his 
sides, “ you can hear the ten-pound notes 
crackle whenever I breathe, and it ’s all 
yours, my dear boy, and welcome. And 
I ’ll prove to you that the Winchester is 
the better gun.” 

“ All right,” returned Stuart, gayly, 
“ and I ’ll try to prove that the Italians 
82 


Miss Delamar’s Understudy 

don’t know how to govern a native state. 
But who is giving this supper, anyway ? ” 
he demanded. “That is the main thing 
— that ’s what I want to know.” 

“ You ’ve got to pack, have n’t you ? ” 
suggested Rives. 

“ I ’ll pack when I get back,” said 
Stuart, struggling into his greatcoat, and 
searching in his pockets for his gloves. 
“ Besides, my things are always ready and 
there ’s plenty of time, the boat does n’t 
leave for six hours yet.” 

“ We ’ll all come back and help,” said 
Weimer. 

“ Then I ’ll never get away,” laughed 
Stuart. He was radiant, happy, and ex- 
cited, like a boy back from school ‘for the 
holidays. But when they had reached the 
pavement, he halted and ran his hand 
down into his pocket, as though feeling 
for his latch-key, and stood looking doubt- 
fully at his friends. 

“ What is it now ? ” asked Rives, 
impatiently. “ Have you forgotten some- 
thing ? ” 


83 


Miss Delamar's Understudy 

Stuart looked back at the front door in 
momentary indecision. 

“ Y-es,” he answered. “ I did forget 
something. But it does n’t matter,” he 
added cheerfully, taking Sloane’s arm. 

“ Come on,” he said, “ and so Seldon 
made a hit, did he ? I am glad — and 
tell me, old man, how long will we have 
to wait at Gib for the P. & O. ? ” 

Stuart’s servant had heard the men 
trooping down the stairs, laughing and 
calling to one another as they went, and 
judging from this that they had departed 
for the night, he put out all the lights 
in the library and closed the piano, and 
lifted the windows to clear the room 
of the tobacco-smoke. He did not 
notice the beautiful photograph sitting 
upright in the armchair before jhe fire- 
place, and so left it alone in the deserted 
library. 

The cold night-air swept in through 
the open window and chilled the silent 
room, and the dead coals in the grate 
dropped one by one into the fender with 

84 


Miss Delamar's Understudy 

a dismal echoing clatter; but the Picture 
still sat in the armchair with the same 
graceful pose and the same lovely expres- 
sion, and smiled sweetly at the encircling 
darkness. 


85 


The Editor’s Story 


I T was a warm afternoon in the early 
spring, and the air in the office was 
close and heavy. The letters of the 
morning had been answered and the 
proofs corrected, and the gentlemen who 
had come with ideas worth one column 
at space rates, and which they thought 
worth three, had compromised with the 
editor on a basis of two, and departed. 
The editor’s desk was covered with manu- 
scripts in a heap, a heap that never seemed 
to grow less, and each manuscript bore a 
character of its own, as marked or as 
unobtrusive as the character of the man or 
of the woman who had written it, which 
disclosed itself in the care with which 
some were presented for consideration, in 
the vain little ribbons of others, or the 
86 


The Editor's Story 

selfish manner in which still others were 
tightly rolled or vilely scribbled. 

The editor held the first page of a poem in 
his hand, and was reading it mechanically, 
for its length had already declared against 
it, unless it might chance to be the pre- 
cious gem out of a thousand, which must 
be chosen in spite of its twenty stanzas. 
But as the editor read, his interest awak- 
ened, and he scanned the verses again, as 
one would turn to look a second time at 
a face which seemed familiar. At the 
fourth stanza his memory was still in 
doubt, at the sixth it was warming to the 
chase, and at the end of the page was in 
full cry. He caught up the second page 
and looked for the final verse, and then at 
the name below, and then back again 
quickly to the title of the poem, and 
pushed aside the papers on his desk in 
search of any note which might have 
accompanied it. 

The name signed at the bottom of the 
second page was Edwin Aram, the title of 
the poem was ‘‘ Bohemia,” and there was 

87 


The Editor's Story 

no accompanying note, only the name ! 
Berkeley written at the top of the first : 
page. The envelope in which it had come ; 
gave no further clew. It was addressed in 1 
the same handwriting as that in which the i 
poem had been written, and it bore the i 
post-mark of New York city. There was i 
no request for the return of the poem, no i 
direction to which either the poem itself 
or the check for its payment in the event i 
of its acceptance might be sent. Berkeley 
might be the name of an apartment-house ; 
or of a country place or of a suburban i 
town. 

The editor stepped out of his office into 
the larger room beyond and said : ‘‘ I ’ve a j 
poem here that appeared in an American I 
magazine about seven years ago. I re- 
member the date because I read it when I | 
was at college. Some one is either trying 
to play a trick on us, or to get money by 
stealing some other man’s brains.” 

It was in this way that Edwin Aram 
first introduced himself to our office, and 
while his poem was not accepted, it was 
88 


The Editor’s Story 

not returned. On the contrary, Mr. 
Aram became to us one of the most in- 
teresting of our would-be contributors, and 
there was no author, no matter of what 
popularity, for whose work we waited with 
greater impatience. But Mr. Aram’s per- 
sonality still remained as completely hidden 
from us as were the productions which he 
offered from the sight of our subscribers. 
For each of the poems he sent had been 
stolen outright and signed with his name. 

It was through no fault of ours that he 
continued to blush unseen, or that his 
pretty taste in poems was unappreciated 
by the general reader. We followed up 
every clew and every hint he chose to give 
us with an enthusiasm worthy of a search 
after a lost explorer, and with an animus 
worthy of better game. Yet there was 
some reason for our interest. The man 
who steals the work of another and who 
passes it off as his own is the special foe 
of every editor, but this particular editor 
had a personal distrust of Mr. Aram. He 
imagined that these poems might possibly be 
89 


The Editor* s Story ij 

a trap which some one had laid for him with ! 
the purpose of drawing him into printing j 
them, and then of pointing out by this fact 1 
how little read he was, and how unfit to i 
occupy the swivel-chair into which he had i 
so lately dropped. Or if this were not the 
case, the man was in any event the enemy 
of all honest people, who look unkindly on I 
those who try to obtain money by false j 
pretences. I 

The evasions of Edwin Aram were ^ 
many, and his methods to avoid detection ' 
not without skill. His second poem was 
written on a sheet of note-paper bearing 
the legend “The Shakespeare Debating 
Club. Edwin Aram, President.” 

This was intended to reassure us as to 
his literary taste and standard, and to meet 
any suspicion we might feel had there 
been no address of any sort accompanying 
the poem. No one we knew had ever 
heard of a Shakespeare Debating Club in 
New York city. But we gave him the 
benefit of the doubt until we found that 
this poem, like the first, was also stolen. 

90 


The Editor’s Story 

His third poem bore his name and an 
address, which on instant inquiry turned 
out to be that of a vacant lot on Seventh 
Avenue near Central Park. 

Edwin Aram had by this time become 
an exasperating and picturesque individual, 
and the editorial staff was divided in its 
opinion concerning him. It was argued 
on one hand that as the man had never 
sent us a real address, his object must be 
to gain a literary reputation at the expense 
of certain poets, and not to make money 
at ours. Others answered this by saying 
that fear of detection alone kept Edwin 
Aram from sending his real address, but 
that as soon as his poem was printed, and 
he ascertained by that fact that he had not 
been discovered, he would put in an ap- 
plication for payment, and let us know 
quickly enough to what portion of New 
York city his check should be forwarded. 

This, however, presupposed the fact 
that he was writing to us over his real 
name, which we did not believe he would 
dare to do. No one in our little circle of 


91 


The Editor’s Story 

journalists and literary men had ever | 
heard of such a man, and his name did 
not appear in the directory. This fact, 
however, was not convincing in itself, as 
the residents of New York move from flat 
to hotel, and from apartments to boarding- 
houses as frequently as the Arab changes 
his camping-ground. We tried to draw 
him out at last by publishing a personal 
paragraph which stated that several contri- 
butions received from Edwin Aram would : 
be returned to him if he would send stamps | 
and his present address. The editor did I 
not add that he would return the poems in I 
person, but such was his warlike intention. 

This had the desired result, and brought 
us a fourth poem and a fourth address, the 
name of a tall building which towers above ” 
Union Square. We seemed to be getting j 
very warm now, and the editor gathered j 
up the four poems, and called to his aid ‘ 
his friend Bronson, the ablest reporter on ! 

the New York , who was to act as 

chronicler. They took with them letters 
from the authors of two of the poems and : 

92 


The Editor’s Story 

from the editor of the magazine in which 
the first one had originally appeared, testi- 
fying to the fact that Edwin Aram had 
made an exact copy of the original, and 
wishing the brother editor good luck in 
catching the plagiarist. 

The reporter looked these over with a 
critical eye. ‘‘ The City Editor told me 
if we caught him,” he said, that I could 
let it run for all it was worth. I can use 
these names, I suppose, and I guess they 
have pictures of the poets at the office. 
If he turns out to be anybody in particu- 
lar, it ought to be worth a full three 
columns. Sunday paper, too.” 

The amateur detectives stood in the 
lower hall in the tall building, between 
swinging doors, and jostled by hurrying 
hundreds, while they read the names on a 
marble directory. 

“ There he is ! ” said the editor, ex- 
citedly. “ ‘ American Literary Bureau.’ 
One room on the fourteenth floor. 
That ’s just the sort of a place in which 
we would be likely to find him.” But 
93 


The Editor’s Story : 

the reporter was gazing open-eyed at a 
name in large letters on an office door. |; 
“ Edward K. Aram,” it read, ‘‘ Commis- j 

sioner of , and City 

What do you think of that ? ” he j 
gasped triumphantly. ' 

“• Nonsense,” said the editor. “ He 1 
would n’t dare ; besides, the initials are i 

different. You ’re expecting too good a ; 

story.” I 

“That’s the way to get them,” 
answered the reporter, as he hurried to- ^ 

wards the office of the City . “ If ! 

a man falls dead, believe it ’s a suicide 
until you prove it ’s not ; if you find a i 
suicide, believe it ’s a murder until you are i 
couvinced to the contrary. Otherwise ' 
you’ll get beaten. We don’t want the i 
proprietor of a little literary bureau, we 1 
want a big city official and I ’ll believe we i 
have one until he proves we have n’t.” . 

“ Which are you going to ask for ? ” | 
whispered the editor, “ Edward K. or ; 
Edwin ? ” 

“ Edwin, I should say,” answered the 
94 


The Editor’s Story 

reporter. ‘‘ He has probably given notice 
that mail addressed that vi^ay should go to 
him.” 

“ Is Mr. Edwin Aram in ? ” he asked. 
A clerk raised his head and looked be- 
hind him. “ No,” he said 5 “ his desk is 
closed. I guess he ’s gone home for the 
day.” 

The reporter nudged the editor savagely 
with his elbow, but his face gave no sign. 
‘‘ That ’s a pity,” he said ; “ we have an 
appointment with him. He still lives at 
Sixty-first Street and Madison Avenue, I 
believe, does he not ? ” 

“ No,” said the clerk ; “ that ’s his 
father, the Commissioner, Edward K. 

The son lives at . Take the Sixth 

Avenue Elevated and get off at ii6th 
Street.” 

“ Thank you,” said the reporter. He 
turned a triumphant smile upon the editor. 
“ We ’ve got him ! ” he said excitedly. 
“ And the son of old Edward K., too ! 
Think of it ! Trying to steal a few dol- 
lars by cribbing other men’s poems ; that ’s 
95 


The Editor’s Story 

the best story there has been in the papers 
for the past three months, — ‘ Edward K. 
Aram’s son a thief ! ’ Look at the names 
— politicians, poets, editors, all mixed up 
in it. It ’s good for three columns, sure.” 

‘‘ We ’ve got to think of his people, 
too,” urged the editor, as they mounted 
the steps of the Elevated road. 

“ He did n’t think of them,” said the 
reporter. 

The house in which Mr. Aram lived 
was an apartment-house, and the brass 
latchets in the hallway showed that it con- 
tained three suites. There were visiting- 
cards under the latchets of the first and 
third stories, and under that of the second 
a piece of note-paper on which was written 
the autograph of Edwin Aram. The 
editor looked at it curiously. He had 
never believed it to be a real name. 

“ I am sorry Edwin Aram did not 
turn out to be a woman,” he said regret- 
fully j “ it would have been so much more 
interesting.” 

■ “ Now,” instructed Bronson, impres- 
96 


The Editor’s Story 

sively, “ whether he is in or not we have 
him. If he ’s not in, we wait until he 
comes, even if he does n’t come until 
morning ; we don’t leave this place until 
we have seen him.” 

“ Very well,” said the editor. 

The maid left them standing at the top 
of the stairs while she went to ask if Mr. 
Aram was in, and whether he would see 
two gentlemen who did not give their 
names because they were strangers to him. 
The two stood silent while they waited, 
eying each other anxiously, and when the 
girl reopened the door, nodded pleasantly, 
and said, “Yes, Mr. Aram is in,” they 
hurried past her as though they feared that 
he would disappear in mid-air, or float 
away through the windows before they 
could reach him. 

And yet, when they stood at last face to 
face with him, he bore a most disappoint- 
ing air of every-day respectability. He 
was a tall, thin young man, with light hair 
and mustache and large blue eyes. His 
back was towards the window, so that his 
7 97 


The Editor’s Story 

face was in the shadow, and he did not 
rise as they entered. The room in which 
he sat was a prettily furnished one, open- 
ing into another tiny room, which, from 
the number of books in it, might have 
been called a library. The rooms had a 
well-to-do, even prosperous, air, but they 
did not show any evidences of a pro- 
nounced taste on the part of their owner, 
either in the way in which they were fur- 
nished or in the decorations of the walls. 
A little girl of about seven or eight years 
of age, who was standing between her 
father’s knees with a hand on each, and 
with her head thrown back on his shoulder, 
looked up at the two visitors with evident 
interest, and smiled brightly. 

‘‘ Mr. Aram ? ” asked the editor, tenta- 
tively. 

The young man nodded, and the two 
visitors seated themselves. 

“ I wish to talk to you on a matter 
of private business,” the editor began. 

Would n’t it be better to send the little 
girl away ? ” 


98 


The Editor’s Story 

The child shook her head violendy at 
this, and crowded up closely to her father ; 
but he held her away from him gently, 
and told her to “ run and play with 
Annie.” 

She passed the two visitors, with her 
head held scornfully in air, and left the 
men together. Mr. Aram seemed to have 
a most passive and incurious disposition. 
He could have no idea as to who his 
anonymous visitors might be, nor did he 
show any desire to know. 

“ I am the editor of ,” the editor 

began. “ My friend also writes for that 
periodical. I have received several poems 
from you lately, Mr. Aram, and one in 
particular which we all liked very much. 
It was called ‘ Bohemia.’ But it is so like 
one that has appeared under the same title 

in the ‘ Magazine ’ that I thought I 

would see you about it, and ask you if you 
could explain the similarity. You see,” 
he went on, “ it would be less embarrass- 
ing if you would do so now than later 
when the poem has been published and 
99 


The Editor’s Story 

when people might possibly accuse you of 
plagiarism.” The editor smiled encour- 
agingly and waited. 

Mr. Aram crossed one leg over the 
other and folded his hands in his lap. He 
exhibited no interest, and looked drowsily 
at the editor. When he spoke it was in 
a tone of unstudied indifference. “ I never 
wrote a poem called ‘ Bohemia,’ ” he said 
slowly ; “ at least, if I did I don’t remem- 
ber it.” 

The editor had not expected a flat 
denial, and it irritated him, for he recog- 
nized it to be the safest course the man 
could pursue, if he kept to it. “ But you 
don’t mean to say,” he protested, smiling, 
“that you can write so excellent a poem 
as ^ Bohemia ’ and then forget having done 

SO r 

“ I might,” said Mr. Aram, unresent- 
fully, and with little interest. “ I scribble 
a good deal.” 

“ Perhaps,” suggested the reporter, 
politely, with the air of one who is trying 
to cover up a difficulty to the satisfaction 

lOO 


The Editor’s Story 

of all, “ Mr. Aram would remember it if 
he saw it.’’ 

The editor nodded his head in assent, 
and took the first page of the two on 
which the poem was written, and held it 
out to Mr. Aram, who accepted the piece 
of foolscap and eyed it listlessly. 

“ Yes, I wrote that,” he said. “ I 
copied it out of a book called Gems from 
American Poets’* There was a lazy 
pause. “ But I never sent it to any 
paper.” The editor and the reporter eyed 
each other with outward calm but with 
some inward astonishment. They could 
not see why he had not adhered to his 
original denial of the thing in toto. It 
seemed to them so foolish to admit having 
copied the poem and then to deny having 
forwarded it. 

‘‘ You see,” explained Mr. Aram, still 
with no apparent interest in the matter, 
“ I am very fond of poetry ; I like to 
recite it, and I often write it out in order 
to make me remember it. I find it im- 
presses the words on my mind. Well, 


lOI 


The Editor’s Story 

that ’s what has happened. I have copied 
this poem out at the office probably, and 
one of the clerks there has found it, and 
has supposed that I wrote it, and he has 
sent it to your paper as a sort of a joke 
on me. You see, father being so well- 
known, it would rather amuse the boys 
if I came out as a poet. That ’s how it 
was, I guess. Somebody must have found 
it and sent it to you, because I never 
sent it.” 

There was a moment of thoughtful 
consideration. I see,” said the editor. 
“ I used to do that same thing myself 
when I had to recite pieces at school. 
I found that writing the verses down 
helped me to remember them. I remem- 
ber that I once copied out many of Shake- 
speare’s sonnets. But, Mr. Aram, it 
never occurred to me, after having copied 
out one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, to 
sign my own name at the bottom of 
it.” 

Mr. Aram’s eyes dropped to the page 
of manuscript in his hand and rested 


102 


The Editor’s Story 

there for some little time. Then he said, 
without raising his head, “ I have n’t 
signed this.” 

“ No,” replied the editor ; “ but you 
signed the second page, which I still 
have in my hand.” 

The editor and his companion expected 
some expression of indignation from Mr. 
Aram at this, some question of their right 
to come into his house and cross-examine 
him and to accuse him, tentatively at 
least, of literary fraud, but they were dis- 
appointed. Mr. Aram’s manner was still 
one of absolute impassibility. Whether 
this manner was habitual to him they 
could not know, but it made them doubt 
their own judgment in having so quickly 
accused him, as it bore the look of un- 
dismayed innocence. 

It was the reporter who was the first to 
break the silence. “ Perhaps some one 
has signed Mr. Aram’s name — the clerk 
who sent it, for instance.” 

Young Mr. Aram looked up at him 
curiously, and held out his hand for the 
103 


The Editor's Story- 

second page. ‘‘Yes,” he drawled, “that’s | 
how it happened. That ’s not my signa- j 
ture. I never signed that.” j 

The editor was growing restless. “ I . 
have several other poems here from you,” 
he said ; “ one written from the rooms of j 
the Shakespeare Debating Club, of which 
I see you are president. Your clerk j 
could not have access there, could he ? | 
He did not write that, too ? ” i 

“ No,” said Mr. Aram, doubtfully, “ he 
could not have written that.” 

The editor handed him the poem, j 
“ It ’s yours then ? ” 

“Yes, that’s mine,” Mr. Aram replied. , 
“ And the signature.” i 

“Yes, and the signature. I wrote that ' 
myself,” Mr. Aram explained, “ and sent | 
it myself. That other one (‘ Bohemia ’) i 
I just copied out to remember, but this is j 
original with me.” 

“ And the envelope in which it was | 
enclosed,” asked the editor, “ did you ad- 
dress that also ? ” 

Mr. Aram examined it uninterestedly. 

104 


The Editor's Story 

“Yes, that’s my handwriting too.” He 
raised his head. His face wore an ex- 
pression of patient politeness. 

“ Oh ! ” exclaimed the editor, suddenly, 
in some embarrassment. “ I handed you 
the wrong envelope. I beg your pardon. 
That envelope is the one in which ‘ Bo- 
hemia’ came.” 

The reporter gave a hardly perceptible 
start ; his eyes were fixed on the pattern 
of the rug at his feet, and the editor con- 
tinued to examine the papers in his hand. 
There was a moment’s silence. From 
outside came the noise of children playing 
in the street and the rapid rush of a pass- 
ing wagon.’ 

When the two visitors raised their 
heads Mr. Aram was looking at them 
strangely, and the fingers folded in his 
lap were twisting in and out. 

“ This Shakespeare Debating Club,” 
said the editor, “ where are its rooms, 
Mr. Aram?” 

“ It has no rooms now,” answered the 
poet. “ It has disbanded. It never had 

105 


The Editor's Story 

any regular rooms ; we just met about and 
read.” 

“ I see — exactly,” said the editor. 
‘‘ And the house on Seventh Avenue from 
which your third poem was sent — did 
you reside there then, or have you always 
lived here ? ” 

“No, yes — I used to live there — I 
lived there when I wrote that poem.” 

The editor looked at the reporter and 
back at Mr. Aram. “ It is a vacant lot, 
Mr. Aram,” he said gravely. 

There was a long pause. The poet 
rocked slowly up and down in his rocking- 
chair, and looked at his hands, which he 
rubbed over one another as though they 
were cold. Then he raised his head and 
cleared his throat. 

“Well, gentlemen,” he said, “you 
have made out your case.” 

“Yes,” said the editor, regretfully, “ we 
have made out our case.” He could not 
help but wish that the fellow had stuck to 
his original denial. It was too easy a 
victory. 


io6 


The Editor s Story 

“ I don’t say, mind you,” went on Mr. 
Aram, ‘‘ that I ever took anybody’s verses 
J and sent them to a paper as my own, but 
I ask you, as one gentleman talking to 
another, and inquiring for information, 
what is there wrong in doing it ? I say, 
^ I had done it, which I don’t admit I 
ever did, where ’s the harm ? ” 

« Where ’s the harm ? ” cried the two 
visitors in chorus. 

‘‘ Obtaining money under false pre- 
tences,” said the editor, is the harm you 
do the publishers, and robbing another man 
of the work of his brain and what credit be- 
longs to him is the harm you do him, and 
telling a lie is the least harm done. Such a 
contemptible foolish lie, too, that you might 
have known would surely find you out in 
spite of the trouble you took to — ” 

“ 1 never asked you for any money,” 
/Interrupted Mr. Aram, quietly, 
y “ But we would have sent it to you, 
nevertheless,” retorted the editor, “if we 
had not discovered in time that the poems 
were stolen.” 

107 


The Editor’s Story 

‘‘ Where would you have sent it ? ” 
asked Mr. Aram. “ I never gave you ! 
a right address, did I ? I ask you, did I ? ji 
The editor paused in some confusion. 

‘‘ Well, if you did not want the money, 
what did you want ? ” he exclaimed. “ I 
must say I should like to know.” 

Mr. Aram rocked himself to and fro, 
and gazed at his two inquisitors with 
troubled eyes. ‘‘ I did n't see any harm 
in it then,” he repeated. “ I don't see 
any harm in it now. I did n't ask you 
for any money. I sort of thought,” he 
said confusedly, “ that I should like to 
see my name in print. I wanted my 
friends to see it. I 'd have liked to have 
shown it to — to — well, I 'd like my wife 
to have seen it. She 's interested in liter- 
ature and books and magazines and things 
like that. That was all I wanted. That 's. 
why I did it.” | 

The reporter looked up askance at th^. 
editor, as a prompter watches the actor to 
see if he is ready to take his cue. 

“ How do I know that ? ” demanded 
io8 


The Editor’s Story 

the editor, sharply. He found it some- 
what difficult to be severe with this poet, 
for the man admitted so much so readily, 
and would not defend himself. Had he 
only blustered and grown angry and or- 
dered them out, instead of sitting helplessly 
there rocking to and fro and picking at 
the back of his hands, it would have made 
it so much easier. “ How do we know,” 
repeated the editor, “ that you did not 
intend to wait until the poems had ap- 
peared, and then send us your real address 
and ask for the money, saying that you 
had moved since you had last written us ? ” 

“ Oh,” protested Mr. Aram, “ you 
know I never thought of that.” 

“ I don’t know anything of the sort,” 
said the editor. “ I only know that you 
have forged and lied and tried to obtain 
money that doesn’t belong to you, and 
that I mean to make an example of you 
and frighten other men from doing the 
same thing. No editor has read every 
poem that was ever written, and there is 
no protection for him from such fellows 
109 


The Editor’s Story 

as you, and the only thing he can do 
when he does catch one of you is to make 
an example of him. That ’s what 1 am 
going to do. I am going to make an 
example of you. I am going to nail you 
up as people nail up dead crows to frighten 
off the live ones. It is my intention to 
give this to the papers to-night, and you 
know what they will do with it in the 
morning.” 

There was a long and most uncomfort- 
able pause, and it is doubtful if the editor 
did not feel it as much as did the man 
opposite him. The editor turned to his 
friend for a glance of sympathy, or of 
disapproval even, but that gentleman still 
sat bending forward with his eyes fixed on 
the floor, while he tapped with the top of 
his cane against his teeth. 

“You don’t mean,” said Mr. Aram, in 
a strangely different voice from which he 
had last spoken, “ that you would do 
that ? ” 

“Yes, I do,” blustered the editor. But 
even as he spoke he was conscious of a 


no 


The Editor s Story- 

sincere regret that he had not come alone. 
He could intuitively feel Bronson mapping 
out the story in his mind and memorizing 
Aram’s every word, and taking mental 
notes of the framed certificates of high 
membership in different military and ma- 
sonic associations which hung upon the 
walls. It had not been long since the edi- 
tor was himself a reporter, and he could 
see that it was as good a story as Bronson 
could wish it to be. But he reiterated, 
‘‘Yes, I mean to give it to the papers 
to-night.” 

“But think,” said Aram — “think, sir, 
who I am. You don’t want to ruin me 
for the rest of my life just for a matter of 
fifteen dollars, do you ? Fifteen dollars 
that no one has lost, either. If I ’d em- 
bezzled a million or so, or if I had robbed 
the city, well and good ! I ’d have taken 
big risks for big money ; but you are 
going to punish me just as hard, because I 
tried to please my wife, as though I had 
robbed a mint. No one has really been 
hurt,” he pleaded ; “ the men who wrote 


The Editor’s Story 

the poems — they ’ve been paid for them ; 
they ’ve got all the credit for them they can 
get. You ’ve not lost a cent. I ’ve 
gained nothing by it; and yet you gentle- 
men are going to give this thing to the j 
papers, and, as you say, sir, we know what 
they will make of it. What with my | 
being my father’s son, and all that, my 
father is going to suffer. My family is 
going to suffer. It will ruin me — ” 

The editor put the papers back into his ' 
pocket. If Bronson had not been there | 
he might possibly instead have handed them | 
over to Mr. Aram, and this story would i 
never have been written. But he could 
not do that now. Mr. Aram’s affairs had 
become the property of the New York 
newspaper. | 

He turned to his friend doubtfully. 

“ What do you think, Bronson ? ” he . 
asked. 

At this sign of possible leniency Aram 
ceased in his rocking and sat erect, with 
eyes wide open and fixed on Bronson’s 
face. But the latter trailed his stick over | 


The Editor’s Story 

the rug beneath his feet and shrugged his 
shoulders. 

“ Mr. Aram,” he said, “ might have 
thought of his family and his father before 
he went into this business. It is rather 
late now. But,” he added, “ I don’t think 
it is a matter we can decide in any event. 
It should be left to the firm.” 

“Yes,” said the editor, hurriedly, glad 
of the excuse to temporize, “ we must 
leave it to the house.” But he read Bron- 
son’s answer to mean that he did not intend 
to let the plagiarist escape, and he knew 
that even were Bronson willing to do so, 
there was still his City Editor to be 
persuaded. 

The two men rose and stood uncomfort- 
ably, shifting their hats in their hands — 
and avoiding each other’s eyes. Mr. 
Aram stood up also, and seeing that his 
last chance had come, began again to plead 
desperately. 

“What good would fifteen dollars do 
me ? ” he said, with a gesture of his hands 
round the room. “ I don’t have to look 
8 113 


The Editor’s Story 

for money as hard as that, I tell you,” he 
reiterated ; “ it was n’t the money I wanted. 
I did n’t mean any harm. I did n’t know 
it was wrong. I just wanted to please my 
wife — that was all. My God, man, can’t 
you see that you are punishing me out of 
all proportion ? ” 

The visitors walked towards the door, 
and he followed them, talking the faster 
as they drew near to it. The scene 
had become an exceedingly painful one, 
and they were anxious to bring it to a 
close. 

The editor interrupted him. “We wilh 
let you know,” he said, “ what we have 
decided to do by to-morrow morning.” 

“You mean,” retorted the man, hope- 
lessly and reproachfully, “ that I will read 
it in the Sunday papers.” 

Before the editor could answer they 
heard the door leading into the apartment, 
open and close, and some one stepping 
quickly across the hall to the room in 
which they stood. The entrance to the 
room was hung with a portiere, and as the 
114 


The Editor’s Story 

three men paused in silence this portiere 
was pushed back, and a young lady stood 
in the doorway, holding the curtains apart 
with her two hands. She was smiling, and 
the smile lighted a face that was inexpres- 
sibly bright and honest and true. Aram’s 
face had been lowered, but the eyes of the 
other two men were staring wide open 
towards the unexpected figure, which 
seemed to bring a taste of fresh pure air 
into the feverish atmosphere of the place. 
The girl stopped uncertainly when she saw 
the two strangers, and bowed her head 
slightly as the mistress of a house might 
welcome any one whom she found in her 
drawing-room. She was entirely above 
and apart from her surroundings. It was 
not only that she was exceedingly pretty, 
but that everything about her, from her 
attitude to her cloth walking-dress, was 
significant of good taste and high 
breeding. 

She paused uncertainly, still smiling, 
and with her gloved hands holding back 
the curtains and looking at Aram with 

115 


The Editor’s Story- 

eyes filled with a kind confidence. She 
was apparently waiting for him to present 
his friends. 

The editor made a sudden but irrevo- 
cable resolve. If she is only a chance 
visitor,” he said to himself, “ I will still 
expose him ; but if that woman in the 
doorway is his wife, I will push Bronson 
under the Elevated train, and the secret 
will die with me.” 

What Bronson’s thoughts were he could 
not know, but he was conscious that his 
friend had straightened his broad shoulders 
and was holding his head erect. 

Aram raised his face, but he did not look 
at the woman in the door. ‘‘ In a minute, 
dear,” he said ; “ I am busy with these 
gentlemen.” 

The girl gave a little ‘‘oh ” of apology, 
smiled at her husband’s bent head, inclined 
her own again slightly to the other men, 
and let the portiere close behind her. It 
had been as dramatic an entrance and exit 
as the two visitors had ever seen upon the 
stage. It was as if Aram had given a 

ii6 


The Editor's Story- 

signal, and the only person who could help 
him had come in the nick of time to plead 
for him. Aram, stupid as he appeared to 
be, had evidently felt the effect his wife’s 
appearance had made upon his judges. He 
still kept his eyes fixed upon the floor, but 
he said, and this time with more confidence 
in his tone, — 

‘‘ It is not, gentlemen, as though I were 
an old man. I have so very long to live 
— so long to try to live this down. Why, 
I am as young as you are. How would 
you like to have a thing like this to carry 
with you till you died ? ” 

The editor still stood staring blankly at 
the curtains through which Mr. Aram’s 
good angel, for whom he had lied and cheated 
in order to gain credit in her eyes, had dis- 
appeared. He pushed them aside with his 
stick. ‘^We will let you know to-mor- 
row morning,” he repeated, and the two 
men passed out from the poet’s presence, 
and on into the hall. They descended the 
stairs in an uncomfortable silence, Bronson 
leading the way, and the editor endeavoring 
117 


The Editor’s Story 

to read his verdict by the back of his head 
and shoulders. 

At the foot of the steps he pulled his 
friend by the sleeve. ‘‘ Bronson,” he 
coaxed, “ you are not going to use it, are 
you ? ” 

Bronson turned on him savagely. ‘‘ For 
Heaven’s sake ! ” he protested, “ vi^hat do 
you think I am ; did you see her ? ” 

So the New York lost a very good 

story, and Bronson a large sum of money 
for not writing it, and Mr. Aram was 
taught a lesson, and his young wife’s con- 
fidence in him remained unshaken. The 
editor and reporter dined together that 
night, and over their cigars decided with 
sudden terror that Mr. Aram might, in his 
ignorance of their good intentions concern- 
ing him, blow out his brains, and for 
nothing. So they despatched a messenger- 
boy up town in post-haste with a note say- 
ing that “ the firm ” had decided to let the 
matter drop. Although, perhaps, it would 
have been better to have given him one 
sleepless night at least. 

ii8 


The Editor’s Story 

That was three years ago, and since 
then Mr. Aram’s father has fallen out with 
Tammany, and has been retired from public 
service. Bronson has been sent abroad to 
represent the United States at a foreign 
court, and has asked the editor to write the 
story that he did not write, but with 
such changes in the names of people and 
places that no one save Mr. Aram may 
know who Mr. Aram really was and is. 

This the editor has done, reporting 
what happened as faithfully as he could, 
and in the hope that it will make an in- 
teresting story in spite of the fact, and not 
on account of the fact, that it is a true 
one. 


119 


An Assisted Emigrant 


G uido stood on the curb-stone in 
Fourteenth Street, between Fifth 
Avenue and Sixth Avenue, with a row 
of plaster figures drawn up on the side- 
walk in front of him. It was snowing, 
and they looked cold in consequence, 
especially the Night and Morning. A 
line of men and boys stretched on either 
side of Guido all along the curb-stone, 
with toys and dolls, and guns that shot 
corks into the air with a loud report, and 
glittering dressings for the Christmas trees. 
It was the day before Christmas. The 
man who stood next in line to Guido had 
hideous black monkeys that danced from 
the end of a rubber string. The man 
danced up and down too, very much, so 
Guido thought, as the monkeys did, and 
stamped his feet on the icy pavement, and 


120 


An Assisted Emigrant 

shouted : “ Here yer are, lady, for five 
cents. Take them home to the children.” 
There were hundreds and hundreds of 
ladies and little girls crowding by all of 
the time ; some of them were a little 
cross and a little tired, as if Christmas 
shopping had told on their nerves, but the 
greater number were happy-looking and 
warm, and some stopped and laughed at 
the monkeys dancing on the rubber strings, 
and at the man with the frost on his 
mustache, who jumped too, and cried, 
“Only five cents, lady — nice Christmas 
presents for the children.” 

Sometimes the ladies bought the mon- 
keys, but no one looked at the cold plaster 
figures of St. Joseph, and Diana, and 
Night and Morning, nor at the heads of 
Mars and Minerva — not even at the 
figure of the Virgin, with her two hands 
held out, which Guido pressed in his arms 
against his breast. 

Guido had been in New York city just 
one month. He was very young — so 
young that he had never done anything at 

I2I 


An Assisted Emigrant 

home but sit on the wharves and watch 
the ships come in and out of the great 
harbor of Genoa. He never had wished 
to depart with these ships when they 
sailed away, nor wondered greatly as to 
where they went. He was content with 
the wharves and with the narrow streets 
near by, and to look up from the bulk- 
heads at the sailors working in the rigging, 
and the 'longshoremen rolling the casks 
on board, or lowering great square boxes 
into the holds. 

He would have liked, could he have 
had his way, to live so for the rest of his 
life; but they would not let him have his 
way, and coaxed him on a ship to go to 
the New World to meet his uncle. He 
was not a real uncle, but only a make- 
believe one, to satisfy those who ob- 
jected to assisted immigrants, and who 
wished to be assured against having to sup- 
port Guido, and others like him. But they 
were not half so anxious to keep Guido at 
home as he himself was to stay there. 

The new uncle met him at Ellis Island, 


122 


An Assisted Emigrant 

and embraced him affectionately, and put 
him in an express wagon, and drove him 
with a great many more of his country- 
men to where Mulberry Street makes a 
bend and joins Hester. And in the Bend 
Guido found thousands of his fellows 
sleeping twenty in a room and over- 
crowded into the street : some who had 
but just arrived, and others who had 
already learned to swear in English, and 
had their street-cleaning badges and their 
peddler’s licenses, to show that they had 
not been overlooked by the kindly society 
of Tammany, which sees that no free and 
independent voter shall go unrewarded. 

New York affected Guido like a bad 
dream. It was cold and muddy, and the 
snow when it fell turned to mud so 
quickly that Guido believed they were 
one and the same. He did not dare to 
think of the place he knew as home. 
And the sight of the colored advertise- 
ments of the steamship lines that hung in 
the windows of the Italian bankers hurt 
him as the sound of traffic on the street 
123 


An Assisted Emigrant 

cuts to the heart of a prisoner in the 
Tombs. Many of his countrymen bade 
good-by to Mulberry Street and sailed 
away ; but they had grown rich through 
obeying the padrones, and working night 
and morning sweeping the Avenue up- 
town, and by living on the refuse from 
the scows at Canal Street. Guido never 
hoped to grow rich, and no one stopped 
to buy his uncle’s wares. 

The electric lights came out, and still 
the crowd passed and thronged before 
him, and the snow fell and left no mark 
on the white figures. Guido was grow- 
ing cold, and the bustle of the hurrying 
hundreds which had entertained him earlier 
in the day had ceased to interest him, and 
his amusement had given place to the 
fear that no one of them would ever stop, 
and that he would return to his uncle 
empty-handed. He was hungry now, as 
well as cold, and though there was not 
much rich food in the Bend at any time, 
to-day he had had nothing of any quality 
to eat since early morning. The man 
124 


An Assisted Emigrant 

with the monkeys turned his head from 
time to time, and spoke to him in a 
language that he could not understand ; 
although he saw that it was something 
amusing and well meant that the man 
said, and so smiled back and nodded. 
He felt it to be quite a loss when the 
man moved away. 

Guido thought very slowly, but he at 
last began to feel a certain contempt for 
the stiff statues and busts which no one 
wanted, and buttoned the figure of the 
one of the woman with her arms held 
out, inside of his jacket, and tucked his 
scarf in around it, so that it might not be 
broken, and also that it might not bear 
the ignominy with the others of being 
overlooked. Guido was a gentle, slow- 
thinking boy, and could not have told you 
why he did this, but he knew that this 
figure was of different clay from the others. 
He had seen it placed high in the cathe- 
drals at home, and he had been told that 
if you ask certain things of it it will listen 
to you. 


125 


An Assisted Emigrant 

The women and children began to dis- 
appear from the crowd, and the necessity 
of selling some of his wares impressed 
itself more urgently upon him as the night 
grew darker and possible customers fewer. 
He decided that he had taken up a bad 
position, and that instead of waiting for 
customers to come to him, he ought to go 
seek for them. With this purpose in his 
mind he gathered the figures together 
upon his tray, and resting it upon his 
shoulder, moved further along the street, 
to Broadway, where the crowd was greater 
and the shops more brilliantly lighted. 
He had good cause to be watchful, for 
the sidewalks were slippery with ice, and 
the people rushed and hurried and brushed 
past him without noticing the burden he 
carried on one shoulder. He wished now 
that he knew some words of this new 
language, that he might call his wares and 
challenge the notice of the passers-by, as 
did the other men who shouted so con- 
tinually and vehemently at the hurrying 
crowds. He did not know what might 
126 


An Assisted Emigrant 

happen if he failed to sell one of his stat- 
ues ; it was a possibility so awful that he 
did not dare conceive of its punishment. 
But he could do nothing, and so stood 
silent, dumbly presenting his tray to the 
people near him. 

His wanderings brought him to the 
corner of a street, and he started to cross 
it, in the hope of better fortune in untried 
territory. There was no need of his 
hurrying to do this, although a car was 
coming towards him, so he stepped care- 
fully but surely. But as he reached the 
middle of the track a man came towards 
him from the opposite pavement ; they 
met and hesitated, and then both jumped 
to the same side, and the man’s shoulder 
struck the tray and threw the white figures 
flying to the track, where the horses 
tramped over them on their way. Guido 
fell backwards, frightened and shaken, and 
the car stopped, and the driver and the 
conductor leaned out anxiously from each 
end. 

There seemed to be hundreds of people 
127 


An Assisted Emigrant 

all around Guido, and some of them 
picked him up and asked him questions in 
a very loud voice, as though that would 
make the language they spoke more intel- 
ligible. Two men took him by each arm 
and talked with him in earnest tones, and 
punctuated their questions by shaking him 
gently. He could not answer them, but 
only sobbed, and beat his hands softly to- 
gether, and looked about him for a chance 
to escape. The conductor of the car 
jerked the strap violently, and the car 
went on its way. Guido watched the 
conductor, as he stood with his hands in 
his pockets looking back at him. Guido 
had a confused idea that the people on the 
car might pay him for the plaster figures 
which had been scattered in the slush and 
snow, so that the heads and arms and legs 
lay on every side or were ground into 
heaps of white powder. But when the 
car disappeared into the night he gave up 
this hope, and pulling himself free from 
his captor, slipped through the crowd and 
ran off into a side street. A man who 
128 


An Assisted Emigrant 

had seen the accident had been trying to 
take up a collection in the crowd, which 
had grown less sympathetic and less 
numerous in consequence, and had gath- 
ered more than the plaster casts were 
worth ; but Guido did not know this, and 
when they came to look for him he was 
gone, and the bareheaded gentleman, with 
his hat full of coppers and dimes, was left 
in much embarrassment. 

Guido walked to Washington Square, 
and sat down on a bench to rest, and then 
curled over quickly, and stretching himself 
out at full length, wept bitterly. When 
any one passed he held his breath and 
pretended to be asleep. He did not know 
what he was to do or where he was to go. 
Such a calamity as this had never entered 
into his calculations of the evils which 
might overtake him, and it overwhelmed 
him utterly. A policeman touched him 
with his night-stick, and spoke to him 
kindly enough, but the boy only backed 
away from the man until he was out of 
his reach, and then ran on again, slipping 
9 129 


An Assisted Emigrant 

and stumbling on the ice and snow. He 
ran to Christopher Street, through Green- 
wich Village, and on to the wharves. 

It was quite late, and he had recovered 
from his hunger, and only felt a sick tired 
ache at his heart. His feet were heavy 
and numb, and he was very sleepy. 
People passed him continually, and doors 
opened into churches and into noisy 
glaring saloons and crowded shops, but 
it did not seem possible to him that there 
could be any relief from any source for 
the sorrow that had befallen him. It 
seemed too awful, and as impossible to 
mend as it would be to bring the crushed 
plaster into shape again. He considered 
dully that his uncle would miss him and 
wait for him, and that his anger would 
increase with every moment of his delay. 
He felt that he could never return to his 
uncle again. 

Then he came to another park, opening 
into a square, with lighted saloons on one 
side, and on the other great sheds, with 
ships lying beside them, and the electric 
130 


An Assisted Emigrant 

lights showing their spars and masts against 
the sky. It had ceased snowing, but the 
air from the river was piercing and cold, 
and swept through the wires overhead 
with a ceaseless moaning. The numb- 
ness had crept from his feet up over the 
whole extent of his little body, and he 
dropped upon a flight of steps back of a 
sailors’ boarding-house, and shoved his 
hands inside of his jacket for possible 
warmth. His fingers touched the figure 
he had hidden there and closed upon it 
lightly, and then his head dropped back 
against the wall, and he fell into a heavy 
sleep. The night passed on and grew 
colder, and the wind came across the ice- 
blocked river with shriller, sharper blasts, 
but Guido did not hear it. 

“ Chuckey ” Martin, who blacked boots 
in front of the corner saloon in summer 
and swept out the bar-room in winter, 
came out through the family entrance and 
dumped a pan of hot ashes into the snow- 
bank, and then turned into the house with 
a shiver. He saw a mass of something 


An Assisted Emigrant 

lying curled up on the steps of the next 
house, and remembered it after he had 
closed the door of the family entrance 
behind him and shoved the pan under the 
stove. He decided at last that it might 
be one of the saloon’s customers, or a 
stray sailor with loose change in his 
pockets, which he would not miss when 
he awoke. So he went out again, and 
picking Guido up, brought him in his 
arms and laid him out on the floor. 

There were over thirty men in the 
place ; they had been celebrating the com- 
ing of Christmas ; and three of them 
pushed each other out of the way in their 
eagerness to pour very bad brandy be- 
tween Guido’s teeth. ‘‘ Chuckey ” Martin 
felt a sense of proprietorship in Guido, 
by the right of discovery, and resented 
this, pushing them away, and protesting 
that the thing to do was to rub his feet 
with snow. 

A fat oily chief engineer of an Italian 
tramp steamer dropped on his knees be- 
side Guido and beat the boy’s hands, and 
132 


An Assisted Emigrant 

with unsteady fingers tore open his scarf 
and jacket, and as he did this the figure 
of the plaster Virgin with her hands 
stretched out looked up at him from its 
bed on Guido’s chest. 

Some of the sailors drew their hands 
quickly across their breasts, and others 
swore in some alarm, and the bar-keeper 
drank the glass of whiskey he had brought 
for Guido at a gulp, and then readjusted 
Ms .pron to show that nothing had dis- 
turbed his equanimity. Guido sat up, 
with his head against the chief engineer’s 
Knees, and opened his eyes, and his ears 
were greeted with words in his own 
tongue. They gave him hot coffee and 
hot soup and more brandy, and he told 
his story in a burst of words that flowed 
like a torrent of tears — how he had been 
stolen from his home at Genoa, where he 
used to watch the boats from the stone 
pier in front of the custom-house, at which 
the sailors nodded, and how the padrone, 
who was not his uncle, finding he could not 
black boots nor sell papers, had given him 

133 


An Assisted Emigrant 

these plaster casts to sell, and how he had 
whipped him when people would not buy 
them, and how at last he had tripped, and 
broken them all except this one hidden in 
his breast, and how he had gone to sleep, 
and he asked now why had they wakened 
him, for he had no place to go. 

Guido remembered telling them this, 
and following them by their gestures as 
they retold it to the others in a strange 
language, and then the lights began to 
spin, and the faces grew distant, and he 
reached out his hand for the fat chief 
engineer, and felt his arms tightening 
around him. 

A cold wind woke Guido, and the 
sound of something throbbing and beating 
like a great clock. He was very warm 
and tired and lazy, and when he raised his 
head he touched the ceiling close above 
him, and when he opened his eyes he 
found himself in a little room with a square 
table covered with oil-cloth in the centre, 
and rows of beds like shelves around the 
walls. The room rose and fell as the 

134 


An Assisted Emigrant 

streets did when he had had nothing to 
eat, and he scrambled out of the warm 
blankets and crawled fearfully up a flight 
of narrow stairs. There was water on 
either side of him, beyond and behind him 
— water blue and white and dancing in 
the sun, with great blocks of dirty ice 
tossing on its surface. 

And behind him lay the odious city of 
New York, with its great bridge and high 
buildings, and before him the open sea. 
The chief engineer crawled up from the 
engine-room and came towards him, rub- 
bing the perspiration from his face with a 
dirty towel. 

“ Good-morning,” he called out. 
“You are feeling pretty well?” 

' “ Yes.” 

“ It is Christmas Day. Do you know 
where you are going ? You are going to 
Italy, to Genoa. It is over there,” he 
said, pointing with his finger. “ Go back 
to your bed and keep warm.” 

He picked Guido up in his arms, and 
ran with him down the companion-way, 

135 


An Assisted Emigrant 

and tossediiim back into his berth. Then 
he pointed to the shelf at one end of the 
little room, above the sheet-iron stove. 
The plaster figure that Guido had wrapped 
in his breast had been put there and lashed 
to its place. 

“ That will bring us good luck and a 
quick voyage,” said the chief engineer. 

Guido lay quite still until the fat 
engineer had climbed up the companion- 
way again and permitted the sunlight to 
once more enter the cabin. Then he 
crawled out of his berth and dropped on 
his knees, and raised up his hands to the 
plaster figure which no one would buy. 


ir 


136 


The Reporter who Made 
Himself King 


T he Old-Time Journalist will tell 
you that the best reporter is the 
one who works his way up. He holds 
that the only way to start is as a printer’s 
devil or as an office boy, to learn in time 
to set type, to graduate from a compositor 
into a stenographer, and as a stenographer 
take down speeches at public meetings, 
and so finally grow into a real reporter, 
with a fire badge on your left suspender, 
and a speaking acquaintance with all the 
greatest men in the city, not even except- 
ing Police Captains. 

That is the old-time journalist’s idea of 
it. That is the way he was trained, and 
that is why at the age of sixty he is still a 
reporter. If you train up a youth in this 
way, he will go into reporting with too full 

137 


The Reporter who j 

a knowledge of the newspaper business, j 
with no illusions concerning it, and with | 
no ignorant enthusiasms, but with a keen | 
and justifiable impression that he is not 
paid enough for what he does. And he 
will only do what he is paid to do. 

Now, you cannot pay a good reporter 
for what he does, because he does not 
work for pay. He works for his paper. 
He gives his time, his health, his brains, 
his sleeping hours, and his eating hours, 
and sometimes his life to get news for it. 
He thinks the sun rises only that men 
may have light by which to read it. But 
if he has been in a newspaper office from 
his youth up, he finds out before he be- 
comes a reporter that this is not so, and 
loses his real value. He should come 
right out of the University where he has 
been doing “ campus notes ” for the 
college weekly, and be pitchforked out into 
city work without knowing whether the 
Battery is at Harlem or Hunter’s Point, 
and with the idea that he is a Moulder of 
Public Opinion and that the Power of the 
138 


Made Himself King 

V Press is greater than the Power of Money, 
li and that the few lines he writes are of 
^ more value in the Editor’s eyes than is the 
I column of advertising on the last page, 
which they are not. After three years- — • 
it is sometimes longer, sometimes not so 
'I long — he finds out that he has given his 
nerves and his youth and his enthusiasm in 
™ exchange for a general fund of miscellane- 
* ous knowledge, the opportunity of personal 
. encounter with all the greatest and most 
^ remarkable men and events that have risen 
in those three years, and a great fund of re- 
source and patience. He will find that he 
has crowded the experiences of the lifetime 
of the ordinary young business man, doctor, 
- or lawyer, or man about town, into three 
short years ; that he has learned to think 
and to act quickly, to be patient and 
unmoved when every one else has lost his 
head, actually or figuratively speaking ; to 
write as fast as another man can talk, and 
to be able to talk with authority on matters 
of which other men do not venture even 
to think until they have read what he has 


The Reporter who 

written with a copy-boy at his elbow on 
the night previous. 

It is necessary for you to know this, 
that you may understand what manner of 
man young Albert Gordon was. 

Young Gordon had been a reporter just 
three years. He had left Yale when his 
last living relative died, and had taken the i 
morning train for New York, where they I 
had promised him reportorial work on one | 
of the innumerable Greatest New York i 
Dailies. He arrived at the office at noon, ji 
and was sent back over the same road on j! 
which he had just come, to Spuyten Duy vil, , 
where a train had been wrecked and every- 
body of consequence to suburban New 
York killed. One of the old reporters 
hurried him to the office again with his ! 
“ copy,” and after he had delivered that, 
he was sent to the Tombs to talk French 
to a man in Murderer’s Row, who could 
not talk anything else, but who had shown 
some international skill in the use of a 
jimmy. And at eight he covered a flower- 
show in Madison Square Garden ; and 
140 


Made Himself King 

at eleven was sent over the Brooklyn 
Bridge in a cab to watch a fire and make 
guesses at the losses to the insurance 
companies. 

He went to bed at one, and dreamed of 
shattered locomotives, human beings lying 
still with blankets over them, rows of cells, 
and banks of beautiful flowers nodding 
their heads to the tunes of the brass band 
in the gallery. He decided when he awoke 
the next morning that he had entered upon 
a picturesque and exciting career, and as one 
day followed another, he became more and 
more convinced of it, and more and more 
devoted to it. He was twenty then, and 
he was now twenty-three, and in that time 
had become a great reporter, and had been 
to Presidential conventions in Chicago, 
revolutions in Hayti, Indian outbreaks on 
the Plains, and midnight meetings of 
moonlighters in Tennessee, and had seen 
what work earthquakes, floods, fire, and 
fever could do in great cities, and had 
contradicted the President, and borrowed 
matches from burglars. And now he 
141 


The Reporter who 

thought he would like to rest and breathe 
a bit, and not to work again unless as a 
war correspondent. The only obstacle to 
his becoming a great war correspondent 
lay in the fact that there was no war, and 
a war correspondent without a war is 
about as absurd an individual as a general 
without an army. He read the papers 
every morning on the elevated trains for 
war clouds ; but though there were many 
war clouds, they always drifted apart, 
and peace smiled again. This was very 
disappointing to young Gordon, and he 
became more and more keenly dis- 
couraged. 

And then as war work was out of the 
question, he decided to write his novel. It 
was to be a novel of New York life, and 
he wanted a quiet place in which to work 
on it. He was already making inquiries 
among the suburban residents of his ac- 
quaintance for just such a quiet spot, when 
he received an offer to go to the Island of 
Opeki in the North Pacific Ocean, as 
secretary to the American consul to that 
142 


Made Himself King 

place. The gentleman who had been 
appointed by the President to act as consul 
at Opeki, was Captain Leonard T. Travis, 
a veteran of the Civil War, who had con- 
tracted a severe attack of rheumatism 
while camping out at night in the dew, 
and who on account of this souvenir of 
his efforts to save the Union had allowed'' 
the Union he had saved to support him in 
one office or another ever since. He had 
met young Gordon at a dinner, and had 
had the presumption to ask him to serve 
as his secretary, and Gordon, much to his 
surprise, had accepted his offer. The idea 
of a quiet life in the tropics with new and 
beautiful surroundings, and with nothing 
to do and plenty of time in which to do it, 
and to write his novel besides, seemed to 
Albert to be just what he wanted ; and 
though he did not know nor care much 
for his superior officer, he agreed to go 
with him promptly, and proceeded to say 
good-by to his friends and to make his 
preparations. Captain Travis was so de- 
lighted with getting such a clever young 

143 


The Reporter who 

gentleman for his secretary, that he re- 
ferred to him to his friends as “ my attache 
of legation ; ” nor did he lessen that gen- 
tleman’s dignity by telling any one that 
the attache’s salary was to be five hundred 
dollars a year. His own salary was only 
fifteen hundred dollars ; and though his 
brother-in-law, Senator Rainsford, tried 
his best to get the amount raised, he was 
unsuccessful. The consulship to Opeki 
was instituted early in the ’50’s, to get rid 
of and reward a third or fourth cousin of 
the President’s, whose services during the 
campaign were important, but whose after- 
presence was embarrassing. He had been 
created consul to Opeki as being more 
distant and unaccessible than any other 
known spot, and had lived and died there ; 
and so little was known of the island, and 
so difficult was communication with it, 
that no one knew he was dead, until Cap- 
tain Travis, in his hungry haste for office, 
had uprooted the sad fact. Captain Travis, 
as well as Albert, had a secondary reason 
for wishing to visit Opeki. His physician 
144 


Made Himself King 

had told him to go to some warm climate 
For his rheumatism, and in accepting the 
consulship his object was rather to follow 
out his doctor’s orders at his country’s 
expense, than to serve his country at the 
expense of his rheumatism. 

Albert could learn but very little of 
Opeki; nothing, indeed, but that it was 
situated about one hundred miles from the 
Island of Octavia, which island in turn 
was simply described as a coaling-station 
three hundred miles distant from the coast 
of California. Steamers from San Fran- 
cisco to Yokohama stopped every third 
week at Octavia, and that was all that 
either Captain Travis or his secretary 
could learn of their new home. This 
was so very little, that Albert stipulated 
to stay only as long as he liked it, and to 
return to the States within a few months 
if he found such a change of plan desirable. 

As he was going to what was an almost 
undiscovered country he thought it would 
be advisable to furnish himself with a 
supply of articles with which he might 
10 145 


The Reporter who 

trade with the native Opekians, and for 
this purpose he purchased a large quantity 
of brass rods, because he had read that 
Stanley did so, and added to these, brass 
curtain chains and about two hundred 
leaden medals similar to those sold by 
street pedlers during the Constitutional 
Centennial celebration in New York City. 

He also collected even more beautiful 
but less expensive decorations for Christ- 
mas trees at a wholesale house on Park 
Row. These he hoped to exchange for 
furs or feathers or weapons, or for what- 
ever other curious and valuable trophies 
the Island of Opeki boasted. He already 
pictured his rooms on his return hung 
fantastically with crossed spears and 
boomerangs, feather head-dresses, and ugly 
idols. 

His friends told him that he was doing 
a very foolish thing, and argued that once 
out of the newspaper world, it would be 
hard to regain his place in it. But he 
thought the novel that he would write 
while lost to the world at Opeki would 
146 


Made Himself King 

serve to make up for his temporary absence 
from it, and he expressly and impressively 
stipulated that the editor should wire him 
if there was a war. 

Captain Travis and his secretary crossed 
the continent without adventure, and took 
passage from San Francisco on the first 
steamer that touched at Octavia. They 
reached that island in three days, and 
learned with some concern that there was 
no regular communication with Opeki, and 
that it would be necessary to charter a 
sail-boat for the trip. Two fishermen 
agreed to take them and their trunks, and 
to get them to their destination within six- 
teen hours if the wind held good. It was 
a most unpleasant sail. The rain fell with 
calm, relentless persistence from what was 
apparently a clear sky; the wind tossed 
the waves as high as the mast and made 
Captain Travis ill; and as there was no 
deck to the big boat, they were forced to 
huddle up under pieces of canvas, and 
talked but little. Captain Travis com- 
plained of frequent twinges of rheumatism, 

147 


The Reporter who 

and gazed forlornly over the gunwale at 
the empty waste of water. 

“ If I Ve got to serve a term of imprison- 
ment on a rock in the middle of the ocean 
for four years,” he said, “ I might just as 
well have done something first to deserve 
it. This is a pretty way to treat a man who 
bled for his country. This is gratitude,/ 
this is.” Albert pulled heavily on his pipe, 
and wiped the rain and spray from his face 
and smiled. 

“ Oh, it won’t be so bad when we get 
there,” he said ; ‘‘ they say these Southern 
people are always hospitable, and the 
whites will be glad to see any one from 
the States.” 

There will be a round of diplomatic 
dinners,” said the consul, with an attempt 
at cheerfulness. “ I have brought two 
uniforms to wear at them.” 

It was seven o’clock in the evening 
when the rain ceased, and one of the black, 
half-naked fishermen nodded and pointed 
at a little low line on the horizon. 

‘‘ Opeki,” he said. The line grew in 


Made Himself King 

length until it proved to be an island with 
great mountains rising to the clouds, and 
as they drew nearer and nearer, showed a 
level coast running back to the foot of the 
mountains and covered with a forest of 
palms. They next made out a village of 
thatched huts around a grassy square, and 
at some distance from the village a wooden 
structure with a tin roof. 

“ I wonder where the town is,” asked 
the consul, with a nervous glance at the 
fishermen. One of them told him that 
what he saw was the town. 

“ That ? ” gasped the consul. “ Is that 
where all the people on the island live ” 
The fisherman nodded ; but the other 
added that there were other natives further 
back in the mountains, but that they were 
bad men who fought and ate each other. 
The consul and his attache of legation 
gazed at the mountains with unspoken 
misgivings. They were quite near now, 
and could see an immense crowd of men 
and women, all of them black, and clad 
but in the simplest garments, waiting to 
149 


The Reporter who 

receive them. They seemed greatly ex- 
cited and ran in and out of the huts, and 
up and down the beach, as wildly as so 
many black ants. But in the front of the 
group they distinguished three men who 
they could see were white, though they 
were clothed, like the others, simply in a 
shirt and a short pair of trousers. Two 
of these three suddenly sprang away on a 
run and disappeared among the palm- 
trees ; but the third one, when he recog- 
nized the American flag in the halyards, 
threw his straw hat in the water and began 
turning handsprings over the sand. 

“ That young gentleman, at least,” said 
Albert, gravely, “ seems pleased to see 
us.” 

A dozen of the natives sprang into the 
water and came wading and swimming 
towards them, grinning and shouting and 
swinging their arms. 

“ I don’t think it ’s quite safe, do you ? ” 
said the consul, looking out wildly to the 
open sea. “ You see, they don’t know 
who I am.” 


Made Himself King 

A great black giant threw one arm over 
the gunwale and shouted something that 
sounded as if it were spelt Owah, Owah, 
as the boat carried him through the surf. 

“ How do you do ? ” said Gordon, 
doubtfully. The boat shook the giant olF 
under the wave and beached itself so sud- 
denly that the American consul was thrown 
forward to his knees. Gordon did not 
wait to pick him up, but jumped out and 
shook hands with the young man who 
had turned handsprings, while the natives 
gathered about them in a circle and chat- 
ted and laughed in delighted excitement. 

“ I ’m awful glad to see you,” said the 
young man, eagerly. “ My name ’s Sted- 
man. I ’m from New Haven, Connecti- 
cut. Where are you from ? ” 

“New York,” said Albert. “This,” 
he added, pointing solemnly to Captain 
Travis, who was still on his knees in the 
boat, “ is the American consul to Opeki.” 
The American consul to Opeki gave a 
wild look at Mr. Stedman of New Haven 
and at the natives. 

^51 


The Reporter who 

“ See here, young man,” he gasped, 
“ is this all there is of Opeki ? ” 

“ The American consul ? ” said young 
Stedman, with a gasp of amazement, and 
looking from Albert to Captain Travis. 
“ Why, I never supposed they would send 
another here; the last one died about fif- 
teen years ago, and there has n’t been one 
since. I ’ve been living in the consul’s 
office with the Bradleys, but I ’ll move 
out, of course. I ’m sure I ’m awfully 
glad to see you. It ’ll make it so much 
more pleasant for me.” 

“Yes,” said Captain Travis, bitterly, as 
he lifted his rheumatic leg over the boat ; 
“ that ’s why we came.” 

Mr. Stedman did not notice this. He 
was too much pleased to be anything but 
hospitable. “ Y ou are soaking wet, are n’t 
you ? ” he said ; “ and hungry, I guess. 
You come right over to the consul’s 
office and get on some other things.” 

He turned to the natives and gave some 
rapid orders in their language, and some 
of them jumped into the boat at this, and 

152 


Made Himself King 

began to lift out the trunks, and others ran 
off towards a large, stout old native, who 
was sitting gravely on a log, smoking, with 
the rain beating unnoticed on his gray hair. 

“ They ’ve gone to tell the King,” said 
Stedman ; “ but you M better get some- 
thing to eat first, and then I ’ll be happy 
to present you properly.” 

‘‘The King,” said Captain Travis, 
with some awe ; “ is there a king ? ” 

“ I never saw a king,” Gordon re- 
marked, “ and I ’m sure I never expected 
to see one sitting on a log in the rain.” 

“ He ’s a very good king,” said Sted- 
man, confidentially ; “ and though you 
mightn’t think it to look at him, he’s a 
terrible stickler for etiquette and form. 
After supper he ’ll give you an audience ; 
and if you have any tobacco, you had bet- 
ter give him some as a present, and you ’d 
better say it ’s from the President : he 
does n’t like to take presents from com- 
mon people, he ’s so proud. The only 
reason he borrows mine is because he 
thinks I ’m the President’s son.” 

^53 


The Reporter who 

‘‘ What makes him think that ? ” de- 
manded the consul, with some shortness. 
Young Mr. Stedman looked nervously at 
the consul and at Albert, and said that 
he guessed some one must have told 
him. 

The consul’s office was divided into 
four rooms with an open court in the 
middle, filled with palms, and watered 
somewhat unnecessarily by a fountain. 

“I made that,” said Stedman, in a 
modest ofF-hand way. “ I made it out of 
hollow bamboo reeds connected with a 
spring. And now I ’m making one for 
the King. He saw this and had a lot of 
bamboo sticks put up all over the town, 
without any underground connections, and 
could n’t make out why the water would n’t 
spurt out of them. And because mine 
spurts, he thinks I ’m a magician.” 

“ I suppose,” grumbled the consul, 
“ some one told him that too.” 

“ I suppose so,” said Mr. Stedman, 
uneasily. 

There was a veranda around the con- 
154 


Made Himself King 

sul’s office, and inside the walls were 
hung with skins, and pictures from illus- 
trated papers, and there was a good deal 
of bamboo furniture, and four broad, cool- 
looking beds. The place was as clean as 
a kitchen. ‘‘ I made the furniture,” said 
Stedman, “ and the Bradleys keep the 
place in order.” 

“ Who are the Bradleys ? ” asked Albert. 

“The Bradleys are those two men you 
saw with me,” said Stedman ; “ they 
deserted from a British man-of-war that 
stopped here for coal, and they act as my 
servants. One is Bradley, Sr., and the 
other, Bradley, Jr.” 

“Then vessels do stop here occasion- 
ally ? ” the consul said, with a pleased 
smile. 

“ Well, not often,” said Stedman. 
“ Not so very often ; about once a year. 
The Nelson thought this was Octavia, and 
put off again as soon as she found out 
her mistake, but the Bradleys took to 
the bush, and the boat’s crew could n’t 
find them. When they saw your flag, 

155 


The Reporter who 

they thought you might mean to send 
them back, so they ran ofF to hide again : 
they ’ll be back, though, when they get 
hungry.” 

The supper young Stedman spread for 
his guests, as he still treated them, was 
very refreshing and very good. There 
was cold fish and pigeon pie, and a hot 
omelet filled with mushrooms and olives 
and tomatoes and onions all sliced up 
together, and strong black coffee. After 
supper, Stedman went off to see the King, 
and came back in a little while to say that 
his Majesty would give them an audience 
the next day after breakfast. “ It is too 
dark now,” Stedman explained ; “ and it ’s 
raining so that they can’t make the street 
lamps burn. Did you happen to notice 
our lamps ? I invented them ; but they 
don’t work very well yet. I ’ve got the 
right idea, though, and I ’ll soon have the 
town illuminated all over, whether it rains 
or not.” 

The consul had been very silent and 
indifferent, during supper, to all around 

156 


Made Himself King 

him. Now he looked up with some show 
of interest. 

“ How much longer is it going to rain, 
do you think ? ” he asked. 

“ Oh, I don’t know,” said Stedman, 
critically. “ Not more than two months, 
I should say.” The consul rubbed his 
rheumatic leg and sighed, but said nothing. 

The Bradleys returned about ten o’clock, 
and came in very sheepishly. The con- 
sul had gone off to pay the boatmen who 
had brought them, and Albert in his 
absence assured the sailors that there was 
not the least danger of their being sent 
away. Then he turned into one of the 
beds, and Stedman took one in another 
room, leaving the room he had occupied 
heretofore for the consul. As he was 
saying good-night, Albert suggested that 
he had not yet told them how he came to 
be on a deserted island ; but Stedman only 
laughed and said that that was a long story, 
and that he would tell him all about it in the 
morning. So Albert went off to bed with- 
out waiting for the consul to return, and 

157 


The Reporter who 

fell asleep, wondering at the strangeness 
of his new life, and assuring himself that 
if the rain only kept up, he would have 
his novel finished in a month. 

The sun was shining brightly when he 
awoke, and the palm-trees outside were 
nodding gracefully in a warm breeze. 
From the court came the odor of strange j 
flowers, and from the window he could 
see the ocean brilliantly blue, and with the 
sun coloring the spray that beat against the 
coral reefs on the shore. 

“Well, the consul can’t complain of 
this,” he said, with a laugh of satisfaction ; 
and pulling on a bath-robe, he stepped 
into the next room to awaken Captain 
Travis. But the room was quite empty, 
and the bed undisturbed. The consul’s 
trunk remained just where it had been 
placed near the door, and on it lay a large 
sheet of foolscap, with writing on it, and 
addressed at the top to Albert Gordon. 
The handwriting was the consul’s. Albert 
picked it up and read it with much anxiety. 
It began abruptly : — 

158 


Made Himself King 

The fishermen who brought us to this 
forsaken spot tell me that it rains here six 
months in the year, and that this is the 
first month. I came here to serve my 
country, for which I fought and bled, but 
I did not come here to die of rheumatism 
and pneumonia. I can serve my country 
better by staying alive ; and whether it 
rains or not, I don't like it. I have been 
grossly deceived, and I am going back. 
Indeed, by the time you get this, I will be 
on my return trip, as I intend leaving with 
the men who brought us here as soon as 
they can get the sail up. My cousin. 
Senator Rainsford, can fix it all right with 
the President, and can have me recalled in 
proper form after I get back. But of 
course it would not do for me to leave my 
post with no one to take my place, and no 
one could be more ably fitted to do so 
than yourself ; so I feel no compunctions 
at leaving you behind. I hereby, there- 
fore, accordingly appoint you my substi- 
tute with full power to act, to collect all 
fees, sign all papers, and attend to all mat- 
159 


The Reporter who 

ters pertaining to your office as American 
consul, and I trust you will worthily uphold 
the name of that country and government 
which it has always been my pleasure and 
duty to serve. 

“ Your sincere friend and superior officer, 
“Leonard T. Travis. 

“ P. S. I did not care to disturb you 
by moving my trunk, so I left it, and you 
can make what use you please of what- 
ever it contains, as I shall not want 
tropical garments where I am going. 
What you will need most, I think, is a 
waterproof and umbrella. 

“ P. S. Look out for that young man 
Stedman. He is too inventive. I hope 
you will like your high office, but as for 
myself, I am satisfied with little old New 
York. Opeki is just a bit too far from 
civilization to suit me.” 

Albert held the letter before him and 
read it over again before he moved. Then 
he jumped to the window. The boat was 
t6o 


Made Himself King 

gone, and there was not a sign of it on 
the horizon. 

‘‘ The miserable old hypocrite ! ” he 
cried, half angry and half laughing. “ If 
he thinks I am going to stay here alone he 
is very greatly mistaken. And yet, why 
not ? ” he asked. He stopped soliloquiz- 
ing and looked around him, thinking 
rapidly. As he stood there, Stedman came 
in from the other room, fresh and smiling 
from his morning’s bath. 

“ Good- morning,” he said, “where’s 
the consul ? ” 

“ The consul,” said Albert, gravely, 
“ is before you. In me you see the 
American consul to Opeki. 

“ Captain Travis,” Albert explained, 
“has returned to the United States. I 
suppose he feels that he can best serve 
his country by remaining on the spot. In 
case of another war now, for instance, he 
would be there to save it again.” 

“ And what are you going to do ? ” 
asked Stedman, anxiously. “You will 
not run away too, will you ? ” 

II i6i 


The Reporter who 

Albert said that he intended to remain 
where he was and perform his consular 
duties, to appoint him his secretary, and 
to elevate the United States in the 
opinion of the Opekians above all other 
nations. 

‘‘ They may not think much of the 
United States in England,” he said ; “but 
we are going to teach the people of Opeki 
that America is first on the map, and that 
there is no second.” 

“ I ’m sure it ’s very good of you to 
make me your secretary,” said Stedman, 
with some pride. “ I hope I won’t make 
any mistakes. What are the duties of a 
consul’s secretary ? ” 

“ That,” said Albert, “ I do not know. 
But you are rather good at inventing, so 
you can invent a few. That should be 
your first duty and you should attend to it 
at once. I will have trouble enough find- 
ing work for myself. Your salary is five 
hundred dollars a year ; and now,” he 
continued briskly, “ we want to prepare 
for this reception. We can tell the King 
162 


Made Himself King 

that Travis was just a guard of honor 
for the trip, and that 1 have sent him back 
to tell the President of my safe arrival. 
That will keep the President from getting 
anxious. There is nothing,” continued 
Albert, like a uniform to impress people 
who live in the tropics, and Travis, it so 
happens, has two in his trunk. He in- 
tended to wear them on State occasions, 
and as I inherit the trunk and all that is 
in it, I intend to wear one of the uniforms, 
and you can have the other. But I have 
first choice, because 1 am consul.” 

Captain Travis’s consular outfit con- 
sisted of one full-dress and one undress 
United States uniform. Albert put on the 
dress-coat over a pair of white flannel 
trousers, and looked remarkably brave and 
handsome. Stedman, who was only eigh- 
teen and quite thin, did not appear so well, 
until Albert suggested his padding out his 
chest and shoulders with towels. This 
made him rather warm, but helped his 
general appearance. 

“ The two Bradleys must dress up, 
163 


The Reporter who 

too,” said Albert. “I think they ought 
to act as a guard of honor, don’t you ? 
The only things I have are blazers and 
jerseys j but it doesn’t much matter what 
they wear, as long as they dress alike.” 

He accordingly called in the two 
Bradleys, and gave them each a pair of the 
captain’s rejected white duck trousers, and 
a blue jersey apiece, with a big white Y 
on it. 

“The students of Yale gave me that,” 
he said to the younger Bradley, “ in which 
to play football, and a great man gave me 
the other. His name is Walter Camp; 
and if you rip or soil that jersey, I ’ll send 
you back to England in irons ; so be 
careful.” 

Stedman gazed at his companions in 
their different costumes, doubtfully. “ It 
reminds me,” he said, “ of private theat- 
ricals. Of the time our church choir 
played ‘ Pinafore.’ ” 

“Yes,” assented Albert; “but I don’t 
think we look quite gay enough. I tell 
you what we need, — medals. You never 
164 


Made Himself King 

saw a diplomat without a lot of decora- 
tions and medals.” 

“Well, I can fix that,” Stedman said. 
“ I Ve got a trunk-full. I used to be the 
fastest bicycle-rider in Connecticut, and 
I Ve got all my prizes with me.” 

Albert said doubtfully that that was n’t 
exactly the sort of medal he meant. 

“ Perhaps not,” returned Stedman, as 
he began fumbling in his trunk j “ but 
the King won’t know the difference. He 
could n’t tell a cross of the Legion of 
Honor from a medal for the tug of war.” 

So the bicycle medals, of which Sted- 
man seemed to have an innumerable 
quantity, were strung in profusion over 
Albert’s uniform, and in a lesser quantity 
over Stedman’s ; while a handful of leaden 
ones, those sold on the streets for the 
Constitutional Centennial, with which 
Albert had provided himself, were wrapped 
up in a red silk handkerchief for presenta- 
tion to the King : with'them Albert placed 
a number of brass rods and brass chains, 
much to Stedman’s delighted approval. 

165 


The Reporter who 

“ That is a very good idea,” he said. 
“ Democratic simplicity is the right thing 
at home, of course ; but when you go 
abroad and mix with crowned heads, you 
want to show them that you know what ’s 
what.” 

“Well,” said Albert, gravely, “I sin- 
cerely hope this crowned head don’t know 
what’s what. If he reads ‘Connecticut 
Agricultural State Fair. One mile bicycle 
race. First Prize,’ on this badge, when 
we are trying to make him believe it’s 
a war medal, it may hurt his feelings.” 

Bradley, Jr., went ahead to announce 
the approach of the American embassy, 
which he did with so much manner that 
the King deferred the audience a half- 
hour, in order that he might better prepare 
to receive his visitors. When the audi- 
ence did take place, it attracted the entire 
population to the green spot in front 
of the King’s palace, and their delight and 
excitement over the appearance of the 
visitors was sincere and hearty. The 
King was too polite to appear much sur- 

i66 


Made Himself King 

prised, but he showed his delight over his 
presents as simply and openly as a child. 
Thrice he insisted on embracing Albert, 
and kissing him three times on the fore- 
head, which, Stedman assured him in a 
side whisper, was a great honor ; an 
honor which was not extended to the 
secretary, although he was given a neck- 
lace of animals’ claws instead, with which 
he was better satisfied. 

After this reception, the embassy 
marched back to the consul’s office, sur- 
rounded by an immense number of the 
natives, some of whom ran ahead and 
looked back at them, and crowded so 
close that the two Bradleys had to poke 
at those nearest with their guns. The 
crowd remained outside the office even 
after the procession of four had dis- 
appeared, and cheered. This suggested 
to Gordon that this would be a good time 
to make a speech, which he accordingly 
did, Stedman translating it, sentence by 
sentence. At the conclusion of this 
effort, Albert distributed a number of 
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The Reporter who 

brass rings among the married men present, 
which they placed on whichever finger 
fitted best, and departed delighted. 

Albert had wished to give the rings to 
the married women, but Stedman pointed 
out to him that it would be much cheaper 
to give them to the married men ; for 
while one woman could only have one 
husband, one man could have at least six 
wives. 

‘‘And now, Stedman,” said Albert, 
after the mob had gone, “ tell me what 
you are doing on this island.” 

“ It ’s a very simple story,” Stedman 
said. “ I am the representative, or agent, 
or operator, for the Yokohama Cable 
Company. The Yokohama Cable Com- 
pany is a company organized in San j 
Francisco, for the purpose of laying a j 
cable to Yokohama. It is a stock com- | 
pany ; and though it started out very well, ' 
the stock has fallen very low. Between | 
ourselves, it is not worth over three or ! 
four cents. When the officers of the | 
company found out that no one would 
1 68 


Made Himself King 

buy their stock, and that no one believed 
in them or their scheme, they laid a cable 
to Octavia, and extended it on to this 
island. Then they said they had run out 
of ready money, and would wait until they 
got more before laying their cable any 
further. I do not think they ever will 
lay it any further, but that is none of my 
business. My business is to answer cable 
messages from San Francisco, so that the 
people who visit the home office can see 
that at least a part of the cable is working. 
That sometimes impresses them, and they 
buy stock. There is another chap over 
in Octavia, who relays all my messages 
and all my replies to those messages that 
come to me through him from San Fran- 
cisco. They never send a message unless 
they have brought some one to the office 
whom they want to impress, and who, 
they think, has money to invest in the 
Y. C. C. stock, and so we never go near 
the wire, except at three o’clock every 
afternoon. And then generally only to 
say ‘ How are you ? ’ or ‘ It ’s raining,’ or 
169 


The Reporter who 

something like that. Pve been saying 
‘ It ’s raining ’ now for the last three 
months, but to-day I will say that the new 
consul has arrived. That will be a 
pleasant surprise for the chap in Octavia, 
for he must be tired hearing about the 
weather. He generally answers, ‘ Here 
too,’ or ^ So you said,’ or something like 
that. I don’t know what he says to the 
home office. He’s brighter than I am, 
and that ’s why they put him between the j 
two ends. He can see that the messages I 
are transmitted more fully and more 
correctly, in a way to please possible 
subscribers.” 

“ Sort of copy editor,” suggested Albert. 

‘‘Yes, something of that sort, I fancy,” 
said Stedman. 

They walked down to the little shed on 
the shore, where the Y. C. C. office was 
placed, at three that day, and Albert 
watched Stedman send off his message 
with much interest. The “ chap at 
Octavia,” on being informed that the 
American consul had arrived at Opeki, 
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Made Himself King 

inquired, somewhat disrespectfully, “ Is it 
a life sentence ? ” 

“ What does he mean by that ? ” asked 
Albert. 

“ I suppose,” said his secretary, doubt- 
fully, “ that he thinks it a sort of a punish- 
ment to be sent to Opeki. I hope you 
won’t grow to think so.” 

“ Opeki is all very well,” said Gordon, 
“ or it will be when we get things going 
our way.” 

As they walked back to the office, Albert 
noticed a brass cannon, perched on a rock 
at the entrance to the harbor. This had 
been put there by the last consul, but it 
had not been fired for many years. Albert 
immediately ordered the two Bradleys to 
get it in order and to rig up a flag-pole be- 
side it, for one of his American flags, which 
they were to salute every night when they 
lowered it at sundown. 

‘‘ And when we are not using it,” he 
said, “the King can borrow it to celebrate 
with, if he does n’t impose on us too 
often. The royal salute ought to be 


The Reporter who 

twenty-one guns, I think ; but that would 
use up too much powder, so he will have 
to content himself with two.” 

“ Did you notice,” asked Stedman that 
night, as they sat on the veranda of the 
consul’s house, in the moonlight, “ how 
the people bowed to us as we passed ? ” 

‘‘Yes,” Albert said he had noticed it. 
“ Why ? ” 

“ Well, they never saluted me,” replied 
Stedman. “ That sign of respect is due to 
the show we made at the reception.” 

“ It is due to us, in any event,” said the 
consul, severely. “ I tell you, my secre- 
tary, that we, as the representatives of 
the United States government, must be 
properly honored on this island. We 
must become a power. And we must do 
so without getting into trouble with the 
King. We must make them honor him, 
too, and then as we push him up, we 
will push ourselves up at the same time.” 

“ They don’t think much of consuls in 
Opeki,” said Stedman, doubtfully. “You 
see the last one was a pretty poor sort. 

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Made Himself King 

He brought the office into disrepute, 
and it was n’t really until I came and 
told them what a fine country the United 
States was, that they had any opinion 
of it at all. Now we must change all 
that.” 

“ That is just what we will do,” said 
Albert. “We will transform Opeki into 
a powerful and beautiful city. We will 
make these people work. They must put 
up a palace for the King, and lay out 
streets, and build wharves, and drain the 
town properly, and light it. I have n’t 
seen this patent lighting apparatus of 
yours, but you had better get to work at 
it at once, and I ’ll persuade the King 
to appoint you commissioner of highways 
and gas, with authority to make his people 
toil. And I,” he cried, in free enthusi- 
asm, “ will organize a navy and a stand- 
ing army. “ Only,” he added, with a 
relapse of interest, “ there is n’t anybody 
to fight.” 

“ There is n’t ” said Stedman, grimly, 
with a scornful smile. “ You just go hunt 

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The Reporter who 

up old Messenwah and the Hillmen with 
your standing army once, and you ’ll get 
all the fighting you want/’ 

“ The Hillmen ? ” said Albert. 

“The Hillmen are the natives that live 
up there in the hills,” Stedman said, nod- 
ding his head towards the three high moun- 
tains at the other end of the island, that 
stood out blackly against the purple moon- 
lit sky. “There are nearly as many of 
them as there are Opekians, and they hunt 
and fight for a living and for the pleasure 
of it. They have an old rascal named 
Messenwah for a king, and they come 
down here about once every three months, 
and tear things up.” 

Albert sprang to his feet. 

“Oh, they do, do they?” he said, star- 
ing up at the mountain tops. “ They come 
down here and tear up things, do they ? 
Well, I think we’ll stop that, I think 
we ’ll stop that ! I don’t care how many 
there are. I ’ll get the two Bradleys to 
tell me all they know about drilling, to- 
morrow morning, and we ’ll drill these 
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Made Himself King 

Opekians, and have sham battles, and 
attacks, and repulses, until I make a lot 
of wild, howling Zulus out of them. And 
when the Hillmen come down to pay their 
quarterly visit, they ’ll go back again on a 
run. At least some of them will,” he 
added ferociously. “ Some of them will 
stay right here.” 

“ Dear me, dear me ! ” said Stedman, 
with awe ; you are a born fighter, are n’t 
you ? ” 

“ Well, you wait and see,” said Gordon ; 
“ maybe I am. I have n’t studied tactics 
of war and the history of battles, so that I 
might be a great war correspondent, with- 
out learning something. And there is only 
one king on this island, and that is old 
Ollypybus himself. And I ’ll go over and 
have a talk with him about it to-morrow.” 

Young Stedman walked up and down 
the length of the veranda, in and out of 
the moonlight, with his hands in his 
pockets, and his head on his chest. “You 
have me all stirred up, Gordon,” he said ; 
“you seem so confident and bold, and 
^.75 


The Reporter who 

you Ve not so much older than I am, 
either.” 

“ My training has been different ; that ’s 
all,” said the reporter. 

‘‘Yes,” Stedman said bitterly; “ I have 
been sitting in an office ever since I left 
school, sending news over a wire or a 
cable, and you have been out in the world, 
gathering it.” 

“And now,” said Gordon, smiling, and 
putting his arm around the other boy’s 
shoulders, “ we are going to make news 
ourselves.” 

“ There is one thing I want to say to 
you before you turn in,” said Stedman. 
“ Before you suggest all these improve- 
ments on Ollypybus, you must remember 
that he has ruled absolutely here for twenty 
years, and that he does not think much of 
consuls. He has only seen your predeces- 
sor and yourself. He likes you because 
you appeared with such dignity, and be- 
cause of the presents ; but if I were you, 
I would n’t suggest these improvements as 
coming from yourself.” 

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Made Himself King 

‘‘ I don’t understand,” said Gordon ; 
‘‘who could they come from ? ” 

“Well,” said Stedman, “if you will al- 
low me to advise, — and you see I know 
these people pretty well, — I would have 
all these suggestions come from the Presi- 
dent direct.” 

“ The President ! ” exclaimed Gordon ; 
“ but how ? what does the President know 
or care about Opeki ? and it would take 
so long — oh, I see, the cable. Is that 
what you have been doing ? ” he asked. 

“Well, only once,” said Stedman, 
guiltily ; “ that was when he wanted to 
turn me out of the consul’s office, and I 
had a cable that very afternoon, from the 
President, ordering me to stay where I was. 
Ollypybus does n’t understand the cable, 
of course, but he knows that it sends mes- 
sages; and sometimes I pretend to send 
messages for him to the President; but he 
began asking me to tell the President to 
come and pay him a visit, and I had to 
stop it.” 

“ I ’m glad you told me,” said Gordon. 

13 177 


The Reporter who 

“ The President shall begin to cable to- 
morrow. He will need an extra appropri- 
ation from Congress to pay for his private 
cablegrams alone.” 

‘‘ And there ’s another thing,” said Sted- 
man. ‘‘ In all your plans, you ’ve arranged 
for the people’s improvement, but not for 
their amusement ; and they are a peaceful, 
jolly, simple sort of people, and we must 
please them.” 

“ Have they no games or amusements 
of their own ? ” asked Gordon. 

“Well, not what we would call games.” 

“ Very well, then, I ’ll teach them base- 
ball. Foot-ball would be too warm. But 
that plaza in front of the King’s bungalow, 
where his palace is going to be, is just the 
place for a diamond. On the whole, 
though,” added the consul, after a mo- 
ment’s reflection, “ you ’d better attend to 
that yourself. I don’t think it becomes 
my dignity as American consul to take off 
my coat and give lessons to young Ope- 
kians in sliding to bases ; do you ? No ; 
I think you ’d better do that. The Bradleys 
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Made Himself King 

will help you, and you had better begin to- 
morrow. You have been wanting to know 
what a secretary of legation’s duties are, 
and now you know. It ’s to organize 
base-ball nines. And after you get yours 
ready,” he added, as he turned into his 
room for the night, “ I ’ll train one that 
will sweep yours off the face of the island. 
For this American consul can pitch three 
curves.” 

The best-laid plans of men go far astray, 
sometimes, and the great and beautiful city 
that was to rise on the coast of Opeki was 
not built in a day. Nor was it ever built. 
For before the Bradleys could mark out 
the foul-lines for the base-ball field on the 
plaza, or teach their standing army the 
goose step, or lay bamboo pipes for the 
water-mains, or clear away the cactus for 
the extension of the King’s palace, the 
Hillmen paid Opeki their quarterly visit. 

Albert had called on the King the next 
morning, with Stedman as his interpreter, 
as he had said he would, and, with maps 
and sketches, had shown his Majesty what 
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The Reporter who 

he proposed to do towards improving 
Opeki and ennobling her king, and when 
the King saw Albert’s free-hand sketches 
of wharves with tall ships lying at anchor, 
and rows of Opekian warriors with the 
Bradleys at their head, and the design for 
his new palace, and a royal sedan-chair, he 
believed that these things were already his, 
and not still only on paper, and he ap- 
pointed Albert his Minister of War, Sted- 
man his Minister of Home Affairs, and 
selected two of his wisest and oldest sub- 
jects to serve them as joint advisers. His 
enthusiasm was even greater than Gor- 
don’s, because he did not appreciate the 
difficulties. He thought Gordon a semi- 
god, a worker of miracles, and urged the 
putting up of a monument to him at once 
in the public plaza, to which Albert ob- 
jected, on the ground that it would be too 
suggestive of an idol ; and to which Sted- 
man also objected, but for the less unselfish 
reason that it would “ be in the way of the 
pitcher’s box.” 

They were feverishly discussing all these 
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Made Himself King 

great changes, and Stedman was translat- 
ing as rapidly as he could translate, the 
speeches of four different men, — for the 
two counsellors had been called in, all of 
whom wanted to speak at once, — when 
there came from outside a great shout, and 
the screams of women, and the clashing 
of iron, and the pattering footsteps of men 
running. 

As they looked at one another in startled 
surprise, a native ran into the room, fol- 
lowed by Bradley, Jr., and threw himself 
down before the King. While he talked, 
beating his hands and bowing before 
Ollypybus, Bradley, Jr., pulled his forelock 
to the consul, and told how this man lived 
on the far outskirts of the village ; how he 
had been captured while out hunting, by 
a number of the Hillmen ; and how he 
had escaped to tell the people that their old 
enemies were on the war path again, and 
rapidly approaching the village. 

Outside, the women were gathering in 
the plaza with the children about them, 
and the men were running from hut to 

i8i 


The Reporter who 

hut, warning their fellows, and arming 
themselves with spears and swords, and 
the native bows and arrows. 

They might have waited until we had 
that army trained,’’ said Gordon, in a tone 
of the keenest displeasure. “Tell me, 
quick, what do they generally do when 
they come ? ” 

“ Steal all the cattle and goats, and 
a woman or two, and set fire to the huts 
in the outskirts,” replied Stedman. 

“ Well, we must stop them,” said Gor- 
don, jumping up. “We must take out a 
flag of truce and treat with them. They 
must be kept off until I have my army in 
working order. It is most inconvenient. 
If they had only waited two months, now, 
or six weeks even, we could have done 
something; but now we must make peace. 
Tell the King we are going out to fix 
things with them, and tell him to keep 
off his warriors until he learns whether 
we succeed or fail.” 

“ But, Gordon ! ” gasped Stedman. 
“Alberti You don’t understand. Why, 
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Made Himself King 

man, this isn’t a street fight or a cane 
rush. They ’ll stick you full of spears, 
dance on your body, and eat you, maybe. 
A flag of truce ! — you ’re talking non- 
sense. What do they know of a flag of 
truce ? ” 

‘^You’re talking nonsense, too,” said 
Albert, “ and you ’re talking to your su- 
perior officer. If you are not with me in 
this, go back to your cable, and tell the 
man in Octavia that it ’s a warm day, and 
that the sun is shining ; but if you ’ve any 
spirit in you, — and I think you have, — 
run to the office and get my Winchester 
rifles, and the two shot-guns, and my 
revolvers, and my uniform, and a lot of 
brass things for presents, and run all the 
way there and back. And make time. 
Play you ’re riding a bicycle at the Agri- 
cultural Fair.” 

Stedman did not hear this last ; for he 
was already off and away, pushing through 
the crowd, and calling on Bradley, Sr., to 
follow him. Bradley, Jr., looked at Gor- 
don with eyes that snapped, like a dog 

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The Reporter who 

that is waiting for his master to throw a 
stone. 

“ I can fire a Winchester, sir,” he said. 
“ Old Tom can’t. He ’s no good at long 
range ’cept with a big gun, sir. Don’t 
give him the Winchester. Give it to me, 
please, sir.” 

Albert met Stedman in the plaza, and 
pulled ofF his blazer, and put on Captain 
Travis’s — now his — uniform coat, and 
his white pith helmet. 

“Now, Jack,” he said, “ get up there 
and tell these people that we are going 
out to make peace with these Hillmen, 
or bring them back prisoners of war. 
Tell them we are the preservers of their 
homes and wives and children ; and you, 
Bradley, take these presents, and, young 
Bradley, keep close to me, and carry this 
rifle.” 

Stedman’s speech was hot and wild 
enough to suit a critical and feverish 
audience before a barricade in Paris. And 
when he was through, Gordon and Bradley 
punctuated his oration by firing off the two 
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Made Himself King 

Winchester rifles in the air, at which the 
people jumped and fell on their knees, and 
prayed to their several gods. The fight- 
ing men of the village followed the four 
white men to the outskirts, and took up 
their stand there as Stedman told them 
to do, and the four walked on over the 
roughly hewn road, to meet the enemy. 

Gordon walked with Bradley, Jr., in 
advance. Stedman and old Tom Bradley 
followed close behind, with the two shot- 
guns, and the presents in a basket. 

“ Are these Hillmen used to guns .? ” 
asked Gordon. Stedman said no, they 
were not. 

“ This shot-gun of mine is the only 
one on the island,” he explained, “ and 
we never came near enough them, before, 
to do anything with it. It only carries 
a hundred yards. The Opekians never 
make any show of resistance. They are 
quite content if the Hillmen satisfy them- 
selves with the outlying huts, as long as 
they leave them and the town alone ; so 
they seldom come to close quarters.” 

185 


The Reporter who 




The four men walked on for half an |j 
hour or so, in silence, peering eagerly on I 
every side ; but it was not until they had I 
left the woods and marched out into the 
level stretch of grassy country, that they 
came upon the enemy. The Hillmen 
were about forty in number, and were as 
savage and ugly-looking giants as any in 
a picture book. They had captured a ! 
dozen cows and goats, and were driving 
them on before them, as they advanced 
further upon the village. When they 
saw the fqur men, they gave a mixed 
chorus of cries and yells, and some of 
them stopped, and others ran forward, 
shaking their spears, and shooting their 
broad arrows into the ground before them. 

A tall, gray-bearded, muscular old man, 
with a skirt of feathers about him, and 
necklaces of bones and animals’ claws 
around his bare chest, ran in front of 
them, and seemed to be trying to make 
them approach more slowly. 

“ Is that Messenwah ? ” asked Gordon. 

‘‘Yes,” said Stedman ; “he is trying 

i86 


Made Himself King 

to keep them back. I don’t believe he 
ever saw a white man before.” 

‘‘ Stedman,” said Albert, speaking 
quickly, “ give your gun to Bradley, and 
go forward with your arms in the air, and 
waving your handkerchief, and tell them 
in their language that the King is coming. 
If they go at you, Bradley and I will kill 
a goat or two, to show them what we can 
do with the rifles ; and if that don’t stop 
them, we will shoot at their legs j and if 
that don’t stop them — I guess you ’d 
better come back, and we ’ll all run.” 

Stedman looked at Albert, and Albert 
looked at Stedman, and neither of them 
winced or flinched. 

“ Is this another of my secretary’s 
duties ” asked the younger boy. 

“Yes,” said the consul; “but a resig- 
nation is always in order. You need n’t 
go if you don’t like it. You see, you 
know the language and I don’t, but I know 
how to shoot and you don’t.” 

“ That ’s perfectly satisfactory,” said 
Stedman, handing his gun to old Bradley. 
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The Reporter who 

‘‘ I only wanted to know why I was to | 
be sacrificed, instead of one of the | 
Bradleys. It ’s because I know the lan- 
guage. Bradley, Sr., you see the evil 
results of a higher education. Wish me 
luck, please,” he said, “ and for goodness’ 
sake,” he added impressively, “ don’t waste 
much time shooting goats.” 

The Hillmen had stopped about two 
hundred yards off, and were drawn up in 
two lines, shouting, and dancing, and hurl- 
ing taunting remarks at their few adver- 
saries. The stolen cattle were bunched 
together back of the King. As Stedman 
walked steadily forward with his handker- 
chief fluttering, and howling out something 
in their own tongue, they stopped and 
listened. As he advanced, his three com- 
panions followed him at about fifty yards 
in the rear. He was one hundred and 
fifty yards from the Hillmen, before they 
made out what he said, and then one of 
the young braves, resenting it as an in- 
sult to his chief, shot an arrow at him. 
Stedman dodged the arrow, and stood his 

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Made Himself King 

ground without even taking a step back- 
wards, only turning slightly to put his 
hands to his mouth, and to shout some- 
thing which sounded to his companions 
like, ‘‘ About time to begin on the goats.” 
But the instant the young man had fired. 
King Messenwah swung his club and 
knocked him down, and none of the others 
moved. Then Messenwah advanced be- 
fore his men to meet Stedman, and on 
Stedman’s opening and shutting his hands 
to show that he was unarmed, the King 
threw down his club and spears, and came 
forward as empty-handed as himself. 

Ah,” gasped Bradley, Jr., with his 
finger trembling on his lever, let me 
take a shot at him now.” Gordon struck 
the man’s gun up, and walked forward in 
all the glory of his gold and blue uniform; 
for both he and Stedman saw now that 
Messenwah was more impressed by their 
appearance, and in the fact that they were 
white men, than with any threats of im- 
mediate war. So when he saluted Gordon 
haughtily, that young man gave him a 
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The Reporter who 

haughty nod in return, and bade Stedman 
tell the King that he would permit him to 
sit down. The King did not quite appear 
to like this, but he sat down, nevertheless, 
and nodded his head gravely. 

‘‘ Now tell him,” said Gordon, “that I 
come from the ruler of the greatest nation 
on earth, and that I recognize Ollypybus 
as the only King of this island, and that 
I come to this little three-penny King 
with either peace and presents, or bullets 
and war. 

“ Have I got to tell him he ’s a 
little three-penny King ? ” said Stedman, 
plaintively. 

“ No ; you need n’t give a literal trans- 
lation ; it can be as free as you please.” 

“Thanks,” said the secretary, humbly. 

“ And tell him,” continued Gordon, 
“ that we will give presents to him and 
his warriors if he keeps away from Ollypy- 
bus, and agrees to keep away always. If 
he won’t do that, try to get him to agree 
to stay away for three months at least, 
and by that time we can get word to San 
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Made Himself King 

Francisco, and have a dozen muskets 
over here in two months ; and when our 
time of probation is up, and he and his 
merry men come dancing down the hill- 
side, we will blow them up as high as his 
mountains. But you need n’t tell him 
that, either. And if he is proud and 
haughty, and would rather fight, ask him 
to restrain himself until we show what 
we can do with our weapons at two hun- 
dred yards.” 

Stedman seated himself in the long 
grass in front of the King, and with 
many revolving gestures of his arms, and 
much pointing at Gordon, and profound 
nods and bows, retold what Gordon had 
dictated. When he had finished, the 
King looked at the bundle of presents, 
and at the guns, of which Stedman had 
given a very wonderful account, but 
answered nothing. 

“ I guess,” said Stedman, with a sigh, 
“ that we will have to give him a little 
practical demonstration to help matters. 
I am sorry, but I think one of those goats 


The Reporter who 

has got to die. It ’s like vivisection. 
The lower order of animals have to 
suffer for the good of the higher.” 

“ Oh,” said Bradley, Jr., cheerfully, 
‘‘ I ’d just as soon shoot one of those 
niggers as one of the goats.” 

So Stedman bade the King tell his men 
to drive a goat towards them, and the 
King did so, and one of the men struck 
one of the goats with his spear, and it 
ran clumsily across the plain. 

“Take your time, Bradley,” said Gor- 
don. “ Aim low, and if you hit it, you 
can have it for supper.” 

“ And if you miss it,” said Stedman, 
gloomily, “ Messenwah may have us for 
supper.” 

The Hillmen had seated themselves a 
hundred yards off, while the leaders were 
debating, and they now rose curiously and 
watched Bradley, as he sank upon one 
knee, and covered the goat with his rifle. 
When it was about one hundred and fifty 
yards off, he fired, and the goat fell over 
dead. 


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Made Himself King 

And then all the Hillmen, with the 
King himself, broke away on a run, 
towards the dead animal, with much shout- 
ing. The King came back alone, leaving 
his people standing about and examining 
the goat. He was much excited, and 
talked and gesticulated violently. 

“ He says — ” said Stedman ; he 
says — ” 

“ What ? yes ; go on.” 

‘‘He says — goodness me! — what do 
you think he says ? ” 

“Well, what does he say?” cried 
Gordon, in great excitement. “ Don’t 
keep it all to yourself.” 

“ He says,” said Stedman, “ that we are 
deceived. That he is no longer King of 
the Island of Opeki, that he is in great 
fear of us, and that he has got himself 
into no end of trouble. He says he sees 
that we are indeed mighty men, that to us 
he is as helpless as the wild boar before 
the javelin of the hunter.” 

“ Well, he ’s right,” said Gordon. 
“ Go on.” 


13 


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The Reporter who 

“ But that which we ask is no longer 
his to give. He has sold his kingship and 
his right to this island to another king, 
who came to him two days ago in a great 
canoe, and who made noises as we do, — 
with guns, I suppose he means, — and to 
whom he sold the island for a watch that 
he has in a bag around his neck. And that 
he signed a paper, and made marks on a 
piece of bark, to show that he gave up 
the island freely and forever.’’ 

“ What does he mean ? ” said Gordon. 
‘‘ How can he give up the island ? Ollypy- 
bus is the king of half of it, anyway, and 
he knows it.” 

“That’s just it,” saidStedman. “That’s 
what frightens him. He said he did n’t 
care about Ollypybus, and did n’t count 
him in when he made the treaty, because 
he is such a peaceful chap that he knew 
he could thrash him into doing anything 
he wanted him to do. And now that you 
have turned up and taken Ollypybus’s 
part, he wishes he had n’t sold the island, 
and wishes to know if you are angry.” 

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Made Himself King 

“ Angry ? of course I ’m angry,’’ said 
Gordon, glaring as grimly at the frightened 
monarch as he thought was safe. ‘‘ Who 
would n’t be angry ? Who do you think 
these people were who made a fool of him, 
Stedman ? Ask him to let us see this 
watch.” 

Stedman did so, and the King fumbled 
among his necklaces until he had brought out 
a leather bag tied round his neck with a cord, 
and containing a plain stem-winding silver 
watch marked on the inside “ Munich.” 

“ That does n’t tell anything,” said 
Gordon. “ But it ’s plain enough. Some 
foreign ship of war has settled on this place 
as a coaling-station, or has annexed it for 
colonization, and they ’ve sent a boat 
ashore, and they ’ve made a treaty with 
this old chap, and forced him to sell his 
birthright for a mess of porridge. Now, 
that ’s just like those monarchical pirates, 
imposing upon a poor old black.” 

Old Bradley looked at him impudently. 

“ Not at all,” said Gordon ; “ it ’s quite 
different with us ; we don’t want to rob 

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him or Ollypybus, or to annex their land. 
All we want to do is to improve it, and 
have the fun of running it for them and 
meddling in their affairs of state. Well, 
Stedman,” he said, ‘‘ what shall we do ? ” 
Stedman said that the best and only 
thing to do was to threaten to take the 
watch away from Messenwah, but to give 
him a revolver instead, which would make 
a friend of him for life, and to keep him 
supplied with cartridges only as long as he 
behaved himself, and then to make him 
understand that, as Ollypybus had not 
given his consent to the loss of the island, 
Messenwah’s agreement, or treaty, or 
whatever it was, did not stand, and that he 
had better come down the next day, early 
in the morning, and join in a general con- 
sultation. This was done, and Messenwah 
agreed willingly to their proposition, and 
was given his revolver and shown how to 
shoot it, while the other presents were dis- 
tributed among the other men, who were 
as happy over them as girls with a full 
dance-card. 


196 


Made Himself King 

“And now, to-morrow,” said Stedman, 
“ understand, you are all to come down 
unarmed, and sign a treaty with great 
Ollypybus, in which he will agree to keep 
to one half of the island, if you keep to 
yours, and there must be no more wars or 
goat-stealing, or this gentleman on my 
right and I will come up and put holes in 
you just as the gentleman on the left did 
with the goat.” 

Messenwah and his warriors promised 
to come early, and saluted reverently as 
Gordon and his three companions walked 
up together very proudly and stiffly. 

“ Do you know how I feel ? ” said 
Gordon. 

“ How ? ” asked Stedman. 

“ I feel as I used to do in the city, when 
the boys in the street were throwing snow- 
balls, and I had to go by with a high hat 
on my head and pretend not to know they 
were behind me. I always felt a cold 
chill down my spinal column, and I could 
feel that snow-ball, whether it came or not, 
right in the small of my back. And I can 
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feel one of those men pulling his bow, now, 
and the arrow sticking out of my right 
shoulder.” 

“ Oh, no, you can’t,” said Stedman. 
“ They are too much afraid of those rifles. 
But I do feel sorry for any of those war- 
riors whom old man Messenwah does n’t 
like, now that he has that revolver. He 
is n’t the sort to practise on goats.” 

There was great rejoicing when Sted- 
man and Gordon told their story to the 
King, and the people learned that they 
were not to have their huts burned and 
their cattle stolen. The armed Opekians 
formed a guard around the ambassadors 
and escorted them to their homes with 
cheers and shouts, and the women ran at 
their side and tried to kiss Gordon’s hand. 

“ I ’m sorry I can’t speak the language, 
Stedman,” said Gordon, ‘^or I would tell 
them what a brave man you are. You 
are too modest to do it yourself, even if I 
dictated something for you to say. As for 
me,” he said, pulling off his uniform, ‘‘ I 
am thoroughly disgusted and disappointed. 

198 


Made Himself King 

It never occurred to me, until it was all 
over, that this was my chance to be a war 
correspondent. It would n’t have been 
much of a war, but then I would have 
been the only one on the spot, and that 
counts for a great deal. Still, my time 
may come.” 

“ We have a great deal on hand for to- 
morrow,” said Gordon that evening, “ and 
we had better turn in early.” 

And so the people were still singing 
and rejoicing down in the village, when the 
two conspirators for the peace of the 
country went to sleep for the night. It 
seemed to Gordon as though he had hardly 
turned his pillow twice to get the coolest 
side, when some one touched him, and he 
saw, by the light of the dozen glow-worms 
in the tumbler by his bedside, a tall figure 
at its foot. 

“ It ’s me — Bradley,” said the figure. 

“Yes,” said Gordon, with the haste of 
a man to show that sleep has no hold on 
him ; “ exactly ; what is it ? ” 

“ There is a ship of war in the harbor,” 
199 


The Reporter who 

Bradley answered in a whisper. “ I heard 
her anchor chains rattle when she came to, 
and that woke me. I could hear that if I 
were dead. And then I made sure by her 
lights ; she ’s a great boat, sir, and I can 
know she ’s a ship of war by the challeng- 
ing, when they change the watch. I 
thought you M like to know, sir.” 

Gordon sat up and clutched his knees 
with his hands. “ Yes, of course,” he 
said ; “ you are quite right. Still, I don’t 
see what there is to do.” 

He did not wish to show too much 
youthful interest, but though fresh from 
civilization, he had learned how far from it 
he was, and he was curious to see this sign 
of it that had come so much more quickly 
than he had anticipated. 

“Wake Mr. Stedman, will you?” said 
he, “ and we will go and take a look at 
her.” 

“You can see nothing but the lights,” 
said Bradley, as he left the room ; “ it ’s a 
black night, sir.” 

Stedman was not new from the sight of 
200 


Made Himself King 

men and ships of war, and came in half 
dressed and eager. 

“ Do you suppose it ’s the big canoe 
Messenwah spoke of?” he said. 

“ I thought of that,” said Gordon. 

The three men fumbled their way down 
the road to the plaza, and saw, as soon as 
they turned into it, the great outlines and 
the brilliant lights of an immense vessel, 
still more immense in the darkness, and 
glowing like a strange monster of the sea, 
with just a suggestion here and there, 
where the lights spread, of her cabins and 
bridges. As they stood on the shore, 
shivering in the cool night wind, they 
heard the bells strike over the water. 

‘‘ It ’s two o’clock,” said Bradley, count- 
ing. 

‘‘Well, we can do nothing, and they 
cannot mean to do much to-night,” Albert 
said. “We had better get some more 
sleep, and, Bradley, you keep watch and 
tell us as soon as day breaks.” 

“ Aye, aye, sir,” said the sailor. 

“ If that ’s the man-of-war that made 


201 


The Reporter who 

the treaty with Messenwah, and Messen- 
wah turns up to-morrow, it looks as if our 
day would be pretty well filled up,” said 
Albert, as they felt their way back to the 
darkness. 

“What do you intend to do?” asked 
his secretary, with a voice of some 
concern. 

“ I don’t know,” Albert answered 
gravely, from the blackness of the night. 
“ It looks as if we were getting ahead just 
a little too fast; doesn’t it? Well,” he 
added, as they reached the house, “ let ’s 
try to keep in step with the procession, 
even if we can’t be drum-majors and walk 
in front of it.” And with this cheering 
tone of confidence in their ears, the two 
diplomats went soundly asleep again. 

The light of the rising sun filled the 
room, and the parrots were chattering 
outside, when Bradley woke him again. 

“ They are sending a boat ashore, sir,” 
he said excitedly, and filled with the impor- 
tance of the occasion. “ She ’s a German 
man-of-war, and one of the new model. 


202 


Made Himself King 

A beautiful boat, sir; for her lines were 
laid in Glasgow, and I can tell that, no 
matter what flag she flies. You had best 
be moving to meet them : the village is n’t 
awake yet.” 

Albert took a cold bath and dressed 
leisurely ; then he made Bradley, Jr., who 
had slept through it all, get up breakfast, 
and the two young men ate it and drank 
their coffee comfortably and with an air of 
confidence that deceived their servants, if 
it did not deceive themselves. But when 
they came down the path, smoking and 
swinging their sticks, and turned into the 
plaza, their composure left them like a 
mask, and they stopped where they stood. 
The plaza was enclosed by the natives 
gathered in whispering groups, and de- 
pressed by fear and wonder. On one side 
were crowded all the Messenwah warriors, 
unarmed, and as silent and disturbed as the 
Opekians. In the middle of the plaza 
some twenty sailors were busy rearing and 
bracing a tall flag-staff that they had 
shaped from a royal palm, and they did 
203 


The Reporter who 

this as unconcernedly and as contemptu- i 
ously, and with as much indifFerence to | 
the strange groups on either side of them, | 
as though they were working on a barren i 
coast, with nothing but the startled sea- 
gulls about them. As Albert and Stedman 
came upon the scene, the flag-pole was in 
place, and the halyards hung from it with 
a little bundle of bunting at the end of 
one of them. 

“ We must find the King at once,” said 
Gordon. He was terribly excited and 
angry. “ It is easy enough to see what 
this means. They are going through the 
form of annexing this island to the other 
lands of the German government. They 
are robbing old Ollypybus of what is his. 
They have not even given him a silver 
watch for it.” 

The King was in his bungalow, facing 
the plaza. Messenwah was with him, and 
an equal number of each of their councils. 
The common danger had made them lie 
down together in peace ; but they gave a 
murmur of relief as Gordon strode into the 
204 


Made Himself King 

room with no ceremony, and greeted them 
with a curt wave of the hand. 

‘‘ Now then, Stedman, be quick,” he 
said. ‘‘ Explain to them what this means ; 
tell them that I will protect them ; that I am 
anxious to see that Ollypybus is not cheated; 
that we will do all we can for them.” 

Outside, on the shore, a second boat's 
crew had landed a group of officers and a 
file of marines. They walked in all the 
dignity of full dress across the plaza to 
the flag-pole, and formed in line on the 
three sides of it, with the marines facing 
the sea. The officers, from the captain 
with a prayer-book in his hand, to the 
youngest middy, were as indifferent to the 
frightened natives about them as the other 
men had been. The natives, awed and 
afraid, crouched back among their huts, 
the marines and the sailors kept their eyes 
front, and the German captain opened his 
prayer-book. The debate in the bungalow 
was over. 

“ If you only had your uniform, sir,” 
said Bradley, Sr., miserably. 

205 


The Reporter who 

‘‘This is a little bit too serious for uni- 
forms and bicycle medals,” said Gordon. 
“ And these men are used to gold lace.” 

He pushed his way through the natives, 
and stepped confidently across the plaza. 
The youngest middy saw him coming, and 
nudged the one next him with his elbow, 
and he nudged the next, but none of the 
officers moved, because the captain had 
begun to read. 

“ One minute, please,” called Gordon. 

He stepped out into the hollow square 
formed by the marines, and raised his 
helmet to the captain. 

“ Do you speak English or French ? ” 
Gordon said in French j “I do not under- 
stand German.” 

The captain lowered the book in his 
hands and gazed reflectively at Gordon 
through his spectacles, and made no 
reply. 

“ If I understand this,” said the younger 
man, trying to be very impressive and 
polite, “you are laying claim to this land, 
in behalf of the German government.” 

206 


Made Himself King 

The captain continued to observe him 
thoughtfully, and then said, “ That iss so,” 
and then asked, “ Who are you ? ” 

“I represent the King of this island, 
Ollypybus, whose people you see around 
you. I also represent the United States 
government that does not tolerate a foreign 
power near her coast, since the days of 
President Monroe and before. The treaty 
you have made with Messenwah is an 
absurdity. There is only one king with 
whom to treat, and he — ” 

The captain turned to one of his officers 
and said something, and then, after giving 
another curious glance at Gordon, raised 
his book and continued reading, in a deep, 
unruffled monotone. The officer whis- 
pered an order, and two of the marines 
stepped out of line, and dropping the 
muzzles of their muskets, pushed Gordon 
back out of the enclosure, and left him 
there with his lips white, and trembling 
all over with indignation. He would have 
liked to have rushed back into' the lines 
and broken the captain’s spectacles over 
207 


The Reporter who 

his sun-tanned nose and cheeks, but he 
was quite sure this would only result in his 
getting shot, or in his being made ridicu- 
lous before the natives, which was almost 
as bad ; so he stood still for a moment, 
with his blood choking him, and then 
turned and walked back to where the King 
and Stedman were whispering together. 
Just as he turned, one of the men pulled 
the halyards, the ball of bunting ran up 
into the air, bobbed, twitched, and turned, 
and broke into the folds of the German 
flag. At the same moment the marines 
raised their muskets and fired a volley, 
and the officers saluted and the sailors 
cheered. 

Do you see that ? ” cried Stedman, 
catching Gordon’s humor, to Ollypybus ; 
“ that means that you are no longer king, 
that strange people are coming here to 
take your land, and to turn your people 
into servants, and to drive you back into 
the mountains. Are you going to submit ? 
are you going to let that flag stay where 
it is ? ” 


208 


Made Himself King 

Messenwah and Ollypybus gazed at one 
another with fearful, helpless eyes. “ We 
are afraid,” Ollypybus cried ; “ we do not 
know what we should do.” 

“ What do they say ? ” 

‘‘ They say they do not know what to 
do.” 

“ I know what I ’d do,” cried Gordon. 
‘‘ If I were not an American consul, I ’d 
pull down their old flag, and put a hole in 
their boat and sink her.” 

“Well, I’d wait until they get under 
way, before you do either of those things,” 
said Stedman, soothingly. “That captain 
seems to be a man of much determination 
of character.” 

“ But I will pull it down,” cried Gordon. 
“I will resign, as Travis did. I am no 
longer consul. You can be consul if you 
want to. I promote you. I am going up 
a step higher. I mean to be king. Tell 
those two,” he ran on excitedly, “that 
their only course and only hope is in me ; 
that they must make me ruler of the 
island until this thing is over; that I will 
14 209 


The Reporter who 

resign again as soon as it is settled, but 
that some one must act at once, and if 
they are afraid to, I am not, only they 
must give me authority to act for them. 
They must abdicate in my favor.” 

“ Are you in earnest ? ” gasped Sted- 
man. 

“ Don’t I talk as if I were ? ” demanded 
Gordon, wiping the perspiration from his 
forehead. 

“ And can I be consul ? ” said Stedman, 
cheerfully. 

“Of course. Tell them what I pro- 
pose to do.” 

Stedman turned and spoke rapidly to the 
two kings. The people gathered closer to 
hear. 

The two rival monarchs looked at one 
another in silence for a moment, and then 
both began to speak at once, their coun- 
sellors interrupting them and mumbling 
their guttural comments with anxious 
earnestness. It did not take them very 
long to see that they were all of one mind, 
and then they both turned to Gordon and 


210 


Made Himself King 

dropped on one knee, and placed his 
hands on their foreheads, and Stedman 
raised his cap. 

“ They agree,” he explained, for it was 
but pantomime to Albert. “ They salute 
you as a ruler ; they are calling you Tella- 
man, which means peacemaker. The 
Peacemaker, that is your title. I hope 
you will deserve it, but I think they might 
have chosen a more appropriate one.” 

‘‘ Then I ’m really King ? ” demanded 
Albert, decidedly, “and I can do what I 
please ? They give me full power. 
Quick, do they ? ” 

“Yes, but don’t do it,” begged Sted- 
man, “ and just remember I am American 
consul now, and that is a much superior 
being to a crowned monarch 5 you said so 
yourself.” 

Albert did not reply to this, but ran 
across the plaza followed by the two 
Bradleys. The boats had gone. 

“ Hoist that flag beside the brass can- 
non,” he cried, “and stand ready to salute 
it when I drop this one.” 

21 1 


The Reporter who 

Bradley, Jr., grasped the halyards of 
the flag, which he had forgotten to raise and 
salute in the morning in all the excitement 
of the arrival of the man-of-war. Brad- 
ley, Sr., stood by the brass cannon, blow- 
ing gently on his lighted fuse. The 
Peacemaker took the halyards of the 
German flag in his two hands, gave a 
quick, sharp tug, and down came the red, 
white, and black piece of bunting, and 
the next moment young Bradley sent the 
stars and stripes up in their place. As 
it rose, Bradley’s brass cannon barked 
merrily like a little bull-dog, and the 
Peacemaker cheered. 

“ Why don’t you cheer, Stedman ? ” 
he shouted. “Tell those people to cheer 
for all they are worth. What sort of an 
American consul are you ? ” 

Stedman raised his arm half-heartedly 
to give the time, and opened his mouth ; 
but his arm remained fixed and his mouth 
open, while his eyes stared at the retreat- 
ing boat of the German man-of-war. In 
the stern sheets of this boat, the stout 
212 


Made Himself King 

German captain was struggling unsteadily 
to his feet ; he raised his arm and waved 
it to some one on the great man-of-war, 
as though giving an order. The natives 
looked from Stedman to the boat, and 
even Gordon stopped in his cheering and 
stood motionless, watching. They had 
not very long to wait. There was a puff 
of white smoke, and a flash, and then a 
loud report, and across the water came a 
great black ball skipping lightly through 
and over the waves, as easily as a flat 
stone thrown by a boy. It seemed to 
come very slowly. At least it came 
slowly enough for every one to see that 
it was coming directly towards the brass 
cannon. The Bradleys certainly saw this, 
for they ran as fast as they could, and 
kept on running. The ball caught the 
cannon under its mouth, and tossed it in 
the air, knocking the flag-pole into a 
dozen pieces, and passing on through two 
of the palm-covered huts. 

“ Great Heavens, Gordon ! ” cried 
Stedman ; “ they are firing on us.” 

213 


The Reporter who 

But Gordon’s face was radiant and 
wild. 

“Firing on / ” he cried. “On us! 
Don’t you see ? Don’t you understand ? 
What do we amount to ? They have 
fired on the American flag. Don’t you 
see what that means ? It means war. A 
great international war. And I am a 
war correspondent at last ! ” He ran up 
to Stedman and seized him by the arm so 
tightly that it hurt. 

“ By three o’clock,” he said, “ they 
will know in the olfice what has happened. 
The country will know it to-morrow 
when the paper is on the street j people 
will read it all over the world. The 
Emperor will hear of it at breakfast ; the 
President will cable for further particulars. 
He will get them. It is the chance of 
a lifetime, and we are on the spot ! ” 

Stedman did not hear this; he was 
watching the broadside of the ship to see 
another puff of white smoke, but there 
came no such sign. The two row-boats 
were raised, there was a cloud of black 
ai4 


Made Himself King 

smoke from the funnel, a creaking of 
chains sounding faintly across the water, 
and the ship started at half-speed and 
moved out of the harbor. The Ope- 
kians and the Hillmen fell on their knees, 
or to dancing, as best suited their sense 
of relief, but Gordon shook his head. 

They are only going to land the 
marines,” he said ; “ perhaps they are 
going to the spot they stopped at before, 
or to take up another position further out 
at sea. They will land men and then 
shell the town, and the land forces will 
march here and co-operate with the vessel, 
and everybody will be taken prisoner or 
killed. We have the centre of the stage, 
and we are making history.” 

“ I ’d rather read it than make it,” said 
Stedman. ‘‘ You ’ve got us in a senseless, 
silly position, Gordon, and a mighty un- 
pleasant one. And for no reason that I 
can see, except to make copy for your 
paper.” 

“Tell those people to get their things 
together,” said Gordon, “ and march back 

215 


The Reporter who j 

out of danger into the woods. Tell 
Ollypybus I am going to fix things all 
right j I don’t know just how yet, but I 
will, and now come after me as quickly 
as you can to the cable office. I ’ve got 
to tell the paper all about it.” 

It was three o’clock before the “ chap 
at Octavia ” answered Stedman’s signal- 
ling. Then Stedman delivered Gordon’s 
message, and immediately shut off all con- 
nection, before the Octavia operator could 
question him. Gordon dictated his mes- * 
sage in this way : — j 

“ Begin with the date line, ‘ Opeki, j 
June 22.’ 

“At seven o’clock this morning, the i 
captain and officers of the German man- 
of-war, Kaiser^ went through the ceremony 
of annexing this island in the name of the 
German Emperor, basing their right to do 
so on an agreement made with a leader 
of a wandering tribe, known as the Hill- 
men. King Ollypybus, the present mon- 
arch of Opeki, delegated his authority, as 
also did the leader of the Hillmen, to King 
216 


Made Himself King 

Tellaman, or the Peacemaker, who tore 
down the German flag, and raised that of 
the United States in its place. At the 
same moment the flag was saluted by the 
battery. This salute, being mistaken for 
an attack on the Kaiser^ was answered by 
that vessel. Her first shot took immedi- 
ate effect, completely destroying the entire 
battery of the Opekians, cutting down the 
American flag, and destroying the houses 
of the people — ” 

“ There was only one brass cannon and 
two huts,” expostulated Stedman. 

“Well, that was the whole battery, 
was n’t it ? ” asked Gordon, “ and two 
huts is plural. 1 said houses of the people. 
I could n’t say two houses of the people. 
Just you send this as you get it. You are 
not an American consul at the present 
moment. You are an under-paid agent 
of a cable company, and you send my 
stuff as I write it. The American resi- 
dents have taken refuge in the consulate — 
that ’s us,” explained Gordon, “ and the 
English residents have sought refuge in 
217 


The Reporter who 

the woods — that’s the Bradleys. King 
Tellaman — that’s me — declares his in- 
tention of fighting against the annexation. 
The forces of the Opekians are under the 
command of Captain Thomas Bradley — 

I guess I might as well make him a 
colonel — of Colonel Thomas Bradley, 
of the English army. 

“ The American consul says — Now, 
what do you say, Stedman ? Hurry up, 
please,” asked Gordon, ‘‘ and say some- 
thing good and strong.” j 

You get me all mixed up,” complained 
Stedman, plaintively. “Which am I now, 
a cable operator or the American consul ? ” ! 

“ Consul, of course. Say something 
patriotic and about your determination to 
protect the interests of your government, 
and all that.” Gordon bit the end of his j 
pencil impatiently, and waited. | 

“ I won’t do anything of the sort, j 
Gordon,” said Stedman ; “ you are getting 
me into an awful lot of trouble, and your- 
self too. I won’t say a word.” 

“ The American consul,” read Gordon, 
218 


Made Himself King 

as his pencil wriggled across the paper, 
“ refuses to say anything for publication 
until he has communicated with the au- 
thorities at Washington, but from all I 
can learn he sympathizes entirely with 
Tellaman. Your correspondent has just 
returned from an audience with King 
Tellaman, who asks him to inform the 
American people that the Monroe doctrine 
will be sustained as long as he rules this 
island. I guess that ’s enough to begin 
with,” said Gordon. “ Now send that 
off quick, and then get away from the in- 
strument before the man in Octavia begins 
to ask questions. I am going out to 
precipitate matters.” 

Gordon found the two kings sitting 
dejectedly side by side, and gazing grimly 
upon the disorder of the village, from 
which the people were taking their leave 
as quickly as they could get their few be- 
longings piled upon the ox-carts. Gordon 
walked amongst them, helping them in 
every way he could, and tasting, in their 
subservience and gratitude, the sweets of 
2 19 


The Reporter who 

sovereignty. When Stedman had locked 
up the cable office and rejoined him, he 
bade him tell Messenwah to send three of 
his youngest men and fastest runners back 
to the hills to watch for the German 
vessel and see where she was attempting 
to land her marines. 

“ This is a tremendous chance for de- 
scriptive writing, Stedman,” said Gordon, 
enthusiastically, ‘‘ all this confusion and 
excitement, and the people leaving their 
homes and all that. It ’s like the people 
getting out of Brussels before Waterloo, 
and then the scene at the foot of the 
mountains, while they are camping out 
there, until the Germans leave. I never 
had a chance like this before.” 

It was quite dark by six o’clock, and 
none of the three messengers had as yet 
returned. Gordon walked up and down 
the empty plaza and looked now at the 
horizon for the man-of-war, and again 
down the road back of the village. But 
neither the vessel nor the messengers, 
bearing word of her, appeared. The night 
220 


Made Himself King 

passed without any incident, and in the 
morning. Gordon’s impatience became so 
great that he walked out to where the 
villagers were in camp and passed on half- 
way up the mountain, but he could see no 
sign of the man-of-war. He came back 
more restless than before, and keenly 
disappointed. 

“ If something don’t happen before three 
o’clock, Stedman,” he said, “ our second 
cablegram will have to consist of glittering 
generalities and a lengthy interview with 
King Tellaman, by himself.” 

Nothing did happen. Ollypybus and 
Messenwah began to breathe more freely. 
They believed the new king had succeeded 
in frightening the German vessel away 
forever. But the new king upset their 
hopes by telling them that the Germans 
had undoubtedly already landed, and had 
probably killed the three messengers. 

“ Now then,” he said, with pleased 
expectation, as Stedman and he seated 
themselves in the cable office at three 
o’clock, “ open it up and let ’s find out 
221 


The Reporter who 

wTiat sort of an impression we have 
made.” 

Stedman’s face, as the answer came in 
to his first message of greeting, was one 
of strangely marked disapproval. 

“ What does he say ? ” demanded 
Gordon, anxiously. 

“ He has n’t done anything but swear 
yet,” answered Stedman, grimly. 

‘‘ What is he swearing about ? ” 

“ He wants to know why I left the 
cable yesterday. He says he has been 
trying to call me up for the last twenty- 
four hours ever since I sent my message 
at three o’clock. The home office is I 
jumping mad, and want me discharged. 
They won’t do that, though,” he said, in 
a cheerful aside, “ because they have n’t 
paid me my salary for the last eight 
months. He says — great Scott! this will 
please you, Gordon — he says that there | 
have been over two hundred queries for 
matter from papers all over the United 
States, and from Europe. Your paper beat 
them on the news, and now the home 


222 


Made Himself King 

office is packed with San Francisco re- 
porters, and the telegrams are coming in 
every minute, and they have been abusing 
him for not answering them, and he says 
that I ’m a fool. He wants as much as 
you can send, and all the details. He 
says all the papers will have to put ‘ By 
Yokohama Cable Company ’ on the top 
of each message they print, and that that 
is advertising the company, and is sending 
the stock up. It rose fifteen points on 
’change in San Francisco to-day, and the 
president and the other officers are 
buying — ” 

“ Oh, I don’t want to hear about their 
old company,” snapped out Gordon, pacing 
up and down in despair. “ What am 
I to do ? that ’s what I want to know. 
Here I have the whole country stirred up 
and begging for news. On their knees 
for it, and a cable all to myself and 
the only man on the spot, and nothing 
to say. I ’d just like to know how long 
that German idiot intends to wait before 
he begins shelling this town and killing 
223 


The Reporter who 

people. He has put me in a most absurd 
position.” 

“ Here ’s a message for you, Gordon,” 
said Stedman, with business-like calm. 
“ Albert Gordon, Correspondent,” he 
read: “Try American consul. First 
message O. K. ; beat the country ; can 
take all you send. Give names of foreign 
residents massacred, and fuller account 
blowing up palace. Dodge.” 

The expression on Gordon’s face as 
this message was slowly read off to him, 
had changed from one of gratified pride to 
one of puzzled consternation. 

“ What ’s he mean by foreign residents 
massacred, and blowing up of palace ? ” 
asked Stedman, looking over his shoulder 
anxiously. “ Who is Dodge ? ” 

“ Dodge is the night editor,” said Gor- 
don, nervously. “ They must have read 
my message wrong. You sent just what 
I gave you, did n’t you ? ” he asked. 

“ Of course I did,” said Stedman, 
indignantly. 

“I didn’t say anything about the mas- 
224 


Made Himself King 

sacre of anybody, did I ? ” asked Gordon. 
‘‘ I hope they are not improving on my 
account. What am I to do ? This is 
getting awful. I ’ll have to go out and 
kill a few people myself. Oh, why don’t 
that Dutch captain begin to do some- 
thing ! What sort of a fighter does he 
call himself? He would n’t shoot at a 
school of porpoises. He’s not — ” 

‘‘ Here comes a message to Leonard 
T. Travis, American consul, Opeki,” 
read Stedman. “ It ’s raining messages 
to-day. ‘ Send full details of massacre 
of American citizens by German sailors.’ 
Secretary of — great Scott ! ” gasped Sted- 
man, interrupting himself and gazing at 
his instrument with horrified fascination 
— ‘‘ the Secretary of State.” 

“ That settles it,” roared Gordon, pull- 
ing at his hair and burying his face in his 
hands. “ I have got to kill some of them 
now.” 

“ Albert Gordon, Correspondent,” read 
Stedman, impressively, like the voice of 
Fate. “ Is Colonel Thomas Bradley com- 
15 225 


The Reporter who 

manding native forces at Opeki, Colonel 
Sir Thomas Kent-Bradley of Crimean war 
fame ? Correspondent London Times^ 
San Francisco Press Club/’ 

“ Go on, go on I ” said Gordon, des- 
perately. ‘‘ I ’m getting used to it now. 
Go on ! ” 

“ American consul, Opeki,” read Sted- 
man. ‘‘ Home Secretary desires you to 
furnish list of names English residents 
killed during shelling of Opeki by ship of 
war Kaiser^ and estimate of amount prop- 
erty destroyed. Stoughton, British Em- 
bassy, Washington.” 

“ Stedman I ” cried Gordon, jumping to 
his feet, “ there ’s a mistake here some- 
where. These people cannot all have 
made my message read like that. Some 
one has altered it, and now I have got to 
make these people here live up to that 
message, whether they like being mas- 
sacred and blown up or not. Don’t answer 
any of those messages, except the one 
from Dodge; tell him things have quieted 
down a bit, and that I ’ll send four thou- 
226 


Made Himself King 

sand words on the flight of the natives from 
the village, and their encampment at the 
foot of the mountains, and of the explor- 
ing party we have sent out to look for 
the German vessel ; and now I am going 
out to make something happen.” 

Gordon said that he would be gone for 
two hours at least, and as Stedman did not 
feel capable of receiving any more nerve- 
stirring messages, he cut off all connection 
with Octavia, by saying “ Good-by for 
two hours,” and running away from the 
office. He sat down on a rock on the 
beach, and mopped his face with his 
handkerchief. 

‘‘ After a man has taken nothing more 
exciting than weather reports from Oc- 
tavia for a year,” he soliloquized, “ it ’s a 
bit disturbing to have all the crowned heads 
of Europe and their secretaries calling upon 
you for details of a massacre that never 
came off.” 

At the end of two hours Gordon re- 
turned from the consulate with a mass of 
manuscript in his hand. 

227 


The Reporter who 

“ Here ’s three thousand words,” he 
said desperately. “ I never wrote more 
and said less in my life. It will make 
them weep at the office. I had to pre- 
tend that they knew all that had happened 
so far; they apparently do know more 
than we do, and I have filled it full of 
prophecies of more trouble ahead, and 
with interviews with myself and the two 
ex-Kings. The only news element in it 
is, that the messengers have returned to 
report that the German vessel is not in 
sight, and that there is no news. They 
think she has gone for good. Suppose 
she has, Stedman,” he groaned, looking at 
/ him helplessly, “what am I going to do?” 

“Well, as for me,” said Stedman, “I’m 
afraid to go near that cable. It ’s like 
playing with a live wire. My nervous 
system won’t stand many more such shocks 
as those they gave us this morning.” 

Gordon threw himself down dejectedly 
in a chair in the office, and Stedman ap- 
proached his instrument gingerly, as though 
it might explode. 


228 


Made Himself King 

‘‘ He ’s swearing again,” he explained 
sadly, in answer to Gordon’s look of in- 
quiry. “ He wants to know when I am 
going to stop running away from the wire. 
He has a stack of messages to send, he 
says, but I guess he ’d better wait and take 
your copy first ; don’t you think so ? ” 

“ Yes, I do,” said Gordon. “ I don’t 
want any more messages than I ’ve had. 
That’s the best I can do,” he said, as he 
threw his manuscript down beside Sted- 
man. “ And they can keep on cabling 
until the wire burns red hot, and they 
won’t get any more.” 

There was silence in the office for some 
time, while Stedman looked over Gordon’s 
copy, and Gordon stared dejectedly out at 
the ocean. 

“ This is pretty poor stuff, Gordon,” 
said Stedman. “ It ’s like giving people 
milk when they want brandy.” 

“ Don’t you suppose I know that ? ” 
growled Gordon. “ It ’s the best I can 
do, is n’t it ? It ’s not my fault that we 
are not all dead now. I can’t massacre 
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The Reporter who 

foreign residents if there are no foreign 
residents, but I can commit suicide though, 
and I ’ll do it if something don’t happen.” 

There was a long pause, in which the 
silence of the office was only broken by 
the sound of the waves beating on the 
coral reefs outside. Stedman raised his 
head wearily. 

“ He ’s swearing again,” he said ; “he 
says this stuff of yours is all nonsense. 
He says stock in the Y. C. C. has gone 
up to one hundred and two, and that 
owners are unloading and making their 
fortunes, and that this sort of descriptive 
writing is not what the company want.” 

“ What ’s he think I ’m here for ? ” 
cried Gordon. “ Does he think I pulled 
down the German flag and risked my neck 
half a dozen times and had myself made 
King just to boom his Yokohama cable 
stock ? Confound him ! You might at 
least swear back. Tell him just what the 
situation is in a few words. Here, stop 
that rigmarole to the paper, and explain to 
your home office that we are awaiting 
230 


Made Himself King 

developments, and that, in the meanwhile, 
they must put up with the best we can 
send them. Wait ; send this to Octavia.” 

Gordon wrote rapidly, and read what he 
wrote as rapidly as it was written. 

“ Operator, Octavia. You seem to 
have misunderstood my first message. 
The facts in the case are these. A Ger- 
man man-of-war raised a flag on this 
island. It was pulled down and the 
American flag raised in its place and 
saluted by a brass cannon. The German 
man-of-war fired once at the flag and 
knocked it down, and then steamed away 
and has not been seen since. Two huts 
were upset, that is all the damage done ; 
the battery consisted of the one brass 
cannon before mentioned. No one, either 
native or foreign, has been massacred. 
The English residents are two sailors. 
The American residents are the young man 
who is sending you this cable and myself. 
Our first message was quite true in sub- 
stance, but perhaps misleading in detail. 
I made it so because I fully expected 
231 


The Reporter who 

much more to happen immediately. 
Nothing has happened, or seems likely to 
happen, and that is the exact situation up 
to date. Albert Gordon.” 

“ Now,” he asked after a pause, “ what 
does he say to that ? ” 

“ He does n’t say anything,” said 
Stedman. 

‘‘ I guess he has fainted. Here it 
comes,” he added in the same breath. He 
bent toward his instrument, and Gordon 
raised himself from his chair and stood 
beside him as he read it olF. The two 
young men hardly breathed in the intensity 
of their interest. 

“ Dear Stedman,” he slowly read aloud. 

“ You and your young friend are a couple 
of fools. If you had allowed me to send 
you the messages awaiting transmission 
here to you, you would not have sent me 
such a confession of guilt as you have just 
done. You had better leave Opeki at 
once or hide in the hills. I am afraid I 
have placed you in a somewhat com- j 
promising position with the company, | 
232 


Made Himself King 

which is unfortunate, especially as, if I am 
not mistaken, they owe you some back 
pay. You should have been wiser in your 
day, and bought Y. C. C. stock when it 
was down to live cents, as ‘ yours truly ’ 
did. You are not, Stedman, as bright a 
boy as some. And as for your friend, the 
war correspondent, he has queered himself 
for life. You see, my dear Stedman, after 
I had sent off your first message, and 
demands for further details came pouring 
in, and I could not get you at the wire to 
supply them, I took the liberty of sending 
some on myself.” 

“ Great Heavens ! ” gasped Gordon. 

Stedman grew very white under his 
tan, and the perspiration rolled on his 
cheeks. 

“Your message was so general in its 
nature, that it allowed my imagination full 
play, and I sent on what I thought would 
please the papers, and, what was much 
more important to me, would advertise 
the Y. C. C. stock. This I have been 
doing while waiting for material from you. 

233 


The Reporter who 

Not having a clear idea of the dimensions 
or population of Opeki, it is possible that 
I have done you and your newspaper 
friend some injustice. I killed off about a 
hundred American residents, two hundred 
English, because I do not like the English, 
and a hundred French. I blew up old 
Ollypybus and his palace with dynamite, 
and shelled the city, destroying some 
hundred thousand dollars’ worth of prop- 
erty, and then I waited anxiously for your 
friend to substantiate what I had said. 
This he has most unkindly failed to do. 
I am very sorry, but much more so for 
him than for myself, for I, my dear friend, 
have cabled on to a man in San Francisco, 
who is one of the directors of the Y. C. C., 
to sell all my stock, which he has done at 
one hundred and two, and he is keeping 
the money until I come. And I leave 
Octavia this afternoon to reap my just 
reward. I am in about twenty thousand 
dollars on your little war, and I feel grate- 
ful. So much so that I will inform you 
that the ship of war Kaiser has arrived at 

234 


Made Himself King 

San Francisco, for which port she sailed 
directly from Opeki. Her captain has 
explained the real situation, and offered to 
make every amend for the accidental 
indignity shown to our flag. He says he 
aimed at the cannon, which was trained 
on his vessel, and which had first fired on 
him. But you must know, my dear Sted- 
man, that before his arrival, war vessels 
belonging to the several powers mentioned 
in my revised despatches, had started for 
Opeki at full speed, to revenge the butch- 
ery of the foreign residents. A word, my 
dear young friend, to the wise is suflicient. 
I am indebted to you to the extent of 
twenty thousand dollars, and in return I 
give you this kindly advice. Leave Opeki. 
If there is no other way, swim. But leave 
Opeki.” 

The sun, that night, as it sank below 
the line where the clouds seemed to touch 
the sea, merged them both into a blazing, 
blood-red curtain, and colored the most 
wonderful spectacle that the natives of 
Opeki had ever seen. Six great ships of 

235 


The Reporter who 

war, stretching out over a league of sea, 
stood blackly out against the red back- 
ground, rolling and rising, and leaping for- 
ward, flinging back smoke and burning 
sparks up into the air behind them, and 
throbbing and panting like living creatures 
in their race for revenge. From the south, 
came a three-decked vessel, a great island 
of floating steel, with a flag as red as the 
angry sky behind it, snapping in the wind. 
To the south of it plunged two long low- 
lying torpedo boats, flying the French tri- 
color, and still further to the north towered 
three magnificent hulls of the White 
Squadron. Vengeance was written on 
every curve and line, on each straining 
engine rod, and on each polished gun 
muzzle. 

And in front of these, a clumsy fishing 
boat rose and fell on each passing wave. 
Two sailors sat in the stern, holding the 
rope and tiller, and in the bow, with their 
backs turned forever toward Opeki, stood 
two young boys, their faces lit by the glow 
of the setting sun and stirred by the sight 
236 


Made Himself King 

of the great engines of war plunging past 
them on their errand of vengeance. 

‘‘ Stedman,” said the elder boy, in an 
awestruck whisper, and with a wave of 
his hand, “ we have not lived in vain.” 


THE END 


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